India have now lost 14 tosses in a row in men’s ODIs, making it one of the least likely streaks in cricket history, or just history.
The streak began with the 2023 World Cup final, when Pat Cummins won the toss and opted to field at Ahmedabad (and silenced a hundred thousand Indians, but that is another story).
Rohit Sharma, who led India that day, was rested for the ODIs in South Africa. KL Rahul lost three consecutive tosses on that tour. Rohit returned to the format after that, losing three tosses in Sri Lanka, three against England at home, and four in the ongoing Champions Trophy including one in the semi-final against Australia.
That takes India’s run to 14 consecutive toss defeats in ODIs. They had already broken this dubious world record: in the semi-final against Australia, they merely extended it.
How unlikely are 14 consecutive toss defeats?
Under the (reasonably fair) assumptions that
(a) both teams are equally likely to win a toss, and
(b) the outcome of one toss does not impact another,
the probability of 14 consecutive defeats is (0.5)^14 – in other words, 0.00006103515 (about 0.006 per cent). That is one in every 16,384.
How low is that probability? NASA’s Center for Near Earth Studies has estimated the chance of asteroid 2024 YR to hit the earth in 2032 is 2.3 per cent – about one in 43. That is about 380 times likelier than India’s streak.
Ignoring leap years, two strangers have a one-in-365 probability of sharing birthdays. But what about day-hour combinations? The chance of two randomly selected people to be born between, say, 11 AM and 11.59 AM on March 1, is one in 8,760 – about twice as likely as India’s streak.
Now on to some cricketing comparisons.
There have been 2,581 men’s Test matches till date. Of these, two have been tied. The likelihood of a tied Test match stands at one in every 1,291 – about 13 times more than a streak of 14 consecutive toss defeats.
A triple-hundred? There have been 49,977 batting innings in men’s Test cricket but only 32 trebles. In other words, if a batter goes out to bat, their chance of reaching 300 is about one in 1,562 (the actual count is higher: one cannot get a triple hundred in the fourth innings if the target is 294 or fewer; there can be other cases too).
Ten wickets in an innings, perhaps? There have been three in all (Jim Laker, Anil Kumble, Ajaz Patel). There have also been 49,977 bowling innings in Test cricket history. When a bowler starts a spell, they have a probability of one in 16,659 of taking all ten... about the same as our probability. But yet again, bowlers compete with teammates: in other words, anyone starting a spell after a teammate has taken a wicket is automatically ruled out. The actual probability will thus be significantly more than one in 16,659.
One can go on, but perhaps we have an idea of how unlikely India’s streak is.
