Short format cricket is continuing to shake things up,abandoning tradition at seemingly every turn.
The colourful kits, when everyone knows that only white is proper attire for bowls and wickets.
Twenty20 is announcing that it will abandon the coin flip to determine who bats first in Big Bash League in Australia. The coin will be replaced by a bat, with “heads or tails” to be replace by “hills or flats.”
We used to shoot odds and evens for our pickup games, because it was much safer than flipping a coin and possibly putting someone’s eye out and far safer than flinging the willow skyward.
The increasingly popular BBL League will start it next tournament on December 19 and BBL Cricket Australia chief Kim McConnie told the ABC, “For me it’s a great moment which reflects what BBL is about. Some people don’t like change but I’d also challenge people to say when was the last time anyone watched the coin toss or really focused on it to a great extent?”
Maybe they could have got a bigger coin and it is highly doubtful that anyone will be paying much attention to the bat flip, unless it is live streamed to their phones.
A special bat will be used. Talk about your innovation. The bat used for games is back-weighted and cannot be relied upon to produce an even chance.
What would make the bat flip truly compelling would be to have celebrities doing the flipping, in which case it might be hard to predict where or if it will come down.
Just like the coin toss, the captain for the visitors will make the selection and the rule states that the bat must complete one full rotation.
In the Test realm, the ICC is pondering abandoning the coin flip, simply asking the visiting captain if his side prefers to bowl or bat first. Talk about boring, but then, we are talking about cricket, so…