Winning the toss in test match cricket anywhere in the world is always vital because it allows you to take advantage of the conditions on offer, but the current Indian captain Virat Kohli has one of the worst records in terms of winning tosses out of all the Indian captains who have led India in more than 40 test matches.
The only Indian captain who captained for a long time in test cricket and still had a worse percentage in terms of winning tosses than Virat Kohli was MS Dhoni who won just 26 tosses out of the 60 test matches in which he captained. Virat Kohli, in comparison, has won 29 tosses in 60 tests, which is slightly better than the record of Dhoni, but not quite as good as the other Indian captains.
Talking about the toss winning percentage of the other Indian captains, Mohammed Azharuddin was the best of the lot as he had the coin falling in his favor 29 times out of 47 test matches, while Sunil Gavaskar and Sourav Ganguly won 22 and 21 tosses in 47 and 49 test matches respectively.
However, what’s interesting is that despite not having the best toss winning percentage, Virat Kohli is the most successful Indian captain ever in the test match history of the country. Not only does it confirm the fact that he has proven to be a good leader for India in the longest format of the game, it also confirms that India has better test match resources with both bat and ball in the current era than it ever had in the past.
The Indian test teams of the past always had great batsmen who were capable of scoring runs anywhere in the world, but what they didn’t have was an allround bowling attack with abundant quality in both seam and spin departments. That’s what they have now.
Virat Kohli won the toss on his return as Indian test captain in the Mumbai test match
Virat Kohli, however, certainly carried some luck with the coin on his return to the Indian test team earlier today as he won the toss in the Mumbai test match after losing quite a few tosses on the England tour a couple of months ago.
Virat didn’t have to think much before deciding to bat first in Mumbai because Wankhede is traditionally the kind of pitch which is supposed to crumble in the latter stages of the test match and batting doesn’t remain an easy task going into the third and the fourth innings.
India had a good start with the bat as the opening pair had a half century partnership before they lost three quick wickets and New Zealand crawled back into the game.
