An intriguing suggestion would allow the captain who loses the toss to attach a run handicap to the more favourable option
![The Spin | Enticing cricket toss proposal could give each side of the coin equal weight](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b82652f5e4b00f8b635651cd6b94db2678a33109/871_888_3490_2093/master/3490.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=c7487b48582f0ebc0f8d2d18a4344f1d)
Haris Aziz is not a man to let a problem pass him by. Born in
Pakistan, he did a Bsc at Lahore University of management sciences, an MSc in maths at Oxford, a PhD at Warwick and is now an associate professor at the University of New South Wales. There he specialises in computational social choice and algorithmic game theory. So far, so on a higher plane.
He also loves
Cricket. So when, during the recent men’s T20
World Cup in the UAE and Oman, the toss became increasingly problematic and the advantage of winning it and fielding first, when a very heavy dew fell at dusk, became more and more obvious – especially in Dubai where 12 out of 13 games were won by the chasing team – Aziz applied his considerable brainpower. How to, in his words, “ensure that the toss continues to be meaningful but doesn’t have an unfair effect on the outcome of the match”.