|
(HW Classics is a section where we relive articles written in the past
which are timeless. These are the articles which grow on you with each
reading (well, that's what we feel anyway) and therefore, probably
shouldn't be relegated to the back pages of the site.)
One of the more interesting new ideas emerging slowly in
cricketing circles is the idea that instead of having a toss to determine who
bats first, we could instead have the captains bid runs.
This seems a perfectly logical progression from the Duckworth –Lewis rule, which
also uses economic theory to compensate for asymmetric playing conditions. In
the case of DL, the asymmetric condition is the number of overs - one team gets
more of them, so what's a fair way to adjust the scores in compensation?
Replacing the toss with bids compensates for unequal light, swing conditions,
weather and pitch wear. It's particularly relevant in day-night ODI's, where
one team clearly has better light to bat in. If it's worth x number of runs to
bat first, why not give those runs to the team that bats second? Or vice-versa
in some cases.
The original idea for implementing this was to have some sort of interactive
multi-round bidding, but the best solution is to have a sealed-bid instant 2nd-price
auction (a.k.a Vickrey Auction). This means that each captain brings an
envelope containing his assessment of how many runs its worth for the choice to
bat or field first. The winner is the captain with the higher of the two bids,
but the runs awarded to the losing side are what the losing captain bidded.
Example: Paul Collingwood bids 40 runs for England and Saurav Ganguly bids 30 for India. Collingwood is awarded the toss,
but when India bats, they begin with 30 bonus
runs on the board. This is the simplest and fairest type of auction for this,
because both sides have the incentive to bid what they think it's worth. If you
bid higher than you think it's worth, you might get lucky, but you risk your
opponent getting more bonus runs than you think the toss is worth. If you bid
lower than it's worth, if you win your lowering the bid does not lower the
opponent's run bonus, but if you lose you've lowered your own bonus.
So what happens if both captains bid the same amount (let's say 35 runs)? Then
toss a coin and the winner get to choose to bat or field first, and the loser
gets the bonus runs which both captains thought the toss was worth (35).
I think this system would be much fairer than the coin toss (especially for
limited overs matches), and I applaud the Chief Cricket Correspondent of The Times Christopher
Martin Jenkins for bringing it to light in the seventh Annual Cowdrey lecture
at Lord’s this past week (although the idea is not originally his) and cricket
coach David Harris of Herefordshire for coming up with the basic concept.
Of course, one odd side effect of this system would be to
introduce the theoretical possibility of an innings defeat to limited overs
cricket. If team A is awarded the toss in exchange for 40 bonus runs, and
they're bowled out for 38, team B wins by an innings and 2 runs.
(Click here to know more about Alan)
|
