“Pat Cummins is a very poor decision maker at the toss.”

Pat Cummins has looked at the pitch, taken the unfashionable option and sent the opposition in seven times since he took the job in December 2021, a call Australian captains are meant to regard the way a vicar regards the collection plate going round twice. Australia won six of those seven Tests and lost the other. A captain whose unfashionable call keeps coming off is a captain reading the pitch rather than guessing at it, which is the opposite of what the claim has in mind. The complaint about him has become part of the furniture of an Australian summer, and like most furniture nobody has checked whether it still takes the weight.

The coin that changes nothing

The sharper test is what happens when the coin goes against him and the choice passes to the other captain. Australia have won 11 of the 15 decided Tests in which Cummins lost the toss, 73.3%, the same side winning at the same rate whether or not its captain is allowed anywhere near the choice.

Batting first, the safe option

Batting first, the choice that draws no complaint from anyone, is what Cummins has done fifteen times when the coin fell his way, and those Tests brought eight wins, four defeats and three draws. Nothing in that record looks like a side being talked into trouble by its captain at ten past ten in the morning. The toss is the one part of Cummins's captaincy nobody needs to worry about.