Shubman Gill has lost as many as five tosses in the ongoing Test series against England, extending India's unwanted streak of consecutive lost tosses to 15 in international cricket, which began in the Pune T20I against the same opposition in January earlier this year. Interestingly, Gill stuck to calling heads for the whole series and it came up tails every single time and it made everyone recall what happened six years ago in the series finale between India and South Africa and if the current Indian Test captain could have tried something like that.
The toss proxy
Faf du Plessis, the then South African captain, had lost the toss in the first two Test matches against India in Visakhapatnam and Pune, while registering colossal losses by 203 runs and an innings and 137 runs. It was the period in the Indian home Tests where the first innings score was a big deal, and if the team was able to post a daunting score, the rebuttal used to be inefficient from the opposition. The series was already gone, so du Plessis chose to have Temba Bavuma at the toss, just to call, hoping for a change of fortunes.
However, it wasn't to be as Bavuma also called it wrong and Kohli won the toss for the third time in the series and chose to bat yet again. India again posted a huge score of 497 runs on the board and it was enough as South Africa failed to knock off that total even after batting twice and suffered a second consecutive innings defeat in the series.
Ollie Pope, who was leading England in the Oval Test, too, was a toss virgin in his fifth Test as captain, having lost on all four occasions previously. However, Pope had won three of those Test matches and Gill took inspiration from the same, saying that as long as India were winning the game, he didn't have any problem in losing the toss.
On a green pitch, England decided to bowl and had India bundled for 224. Meanwhile, England have already knocked off 115 of them.