The Nawab of Panauti - Virat Kohli's miraculous tossing record

[Teja.]

Kohli has won 86/207 tosses in his international captaincy career so far. The odds of someone winning that small a portion (or worse) of tosses in such a reasonable sample size is less than 1% (0.895 if you're a nerd). It's a historically incredible record.

To put in perspective how bad Kohli's luck with the toss has been, his success rate with the toss is actually closer to 1/3rd than 1/2 over 200+ games in a ****ing pure 50/50 exercise.

Kohli also comfortably holds the record for the least % of success with the toss among cricketers who have captained 100+ games across formats.

Names	Matches	Won Toss	Lost Toss	W/L %
Virat Kohli	207	86	121	0.71
Richie Richardson	155	66	89	0.74
Michael Clarke	139	62	77	0.8
Brian Lara	172	72	95	0.811
Sarfaraz Ahmed	100	45	55	0.818

What is this black magic?

 

[The Sean]

Ha, that's genuinely extraordinary.

So he could call correctly on his next 34 consecutive tosses* and he still wouldn't be at a 50% success rate.

* The chances of this happening are 0.000000006%, or one in 16.7 billion. File under "unlikely".

 

[Victor Ian]

But what are the odds of SOMEONE getting that number out of all the people who have tossed enough. Probably certain.

 

[Victor Ian]

Of course, the point still stands that if there is going to be one wanker in a hundred tossers, it happens to be Kohli.

 

[Himannv]

So Kohli is the worst tosser ever?

 

[Victor Ian]

So Kohli is the worst tosser ever?

Yep. The tosser of tossers.

 

[honestbharani]

The funny thing is, he wont be calling in the home games, which means we should only consider the away percentage. It may be closer to 20% when it comes to actually calling correctly in tosses for Virat.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Who's the anti-Kohli?

Always felt as if Root seems to call correctly more often than not, albeit from a much smaller sample size.

 

[Spark]

Maybe it's just particle physics brain talking but honestly, it's not that much of an outlier. A bit of an outlier, but given the sheer number of cricket games and cricketers who have captained a side, two and a half standard deviations way from the expected value isn't that much given how anomalous it feels when he keeps losing tosses.

But this would be a good opportunity for people to reflect on how much hidden variance from pure statistical chance is baked into, oh I dunno, every single statistic used in cricket and how even something like batting average needs pretty big errors bars put on it.

 

[Teja.]

Maybe it's just particle physics brain talking but honestly, it's not that much of an outlier. A bit of an outlier, but given the sheer number of cricket games and cricketers who have captained a side, two and a half standard deviations way from the expected value isn't that much given how anomalous it feels when he keeps losing tosses.

But this would be a good opportunity for people to reflect on how much hidden variance from pure statistical chance is baked into, oh I dunno, every single statistic used in cricket and how even something like batting average needs pretty big errors bars put on it.

I mean it's not a universe defying outlier but being the worst ever in the history of cricket is pretty notable.

 

[ankitj]

If you just look at last 2 years or so his toss losing streak has been quite extraordinary

 

[Anil]

the bad luck with tosses probably enhances his solid win percentages as a skipper, does it not?

 

[Immenso]

Who's the anti-Kohli?

Always felt as if Root seems to call correctly more often than not, albeit from a much smaller sample size.

Pretty much. Root wins 61% of his tosses.
But as he only captains the test team he doesn't affect the quantity much.

56 matches as captain, won 34, lost 22 tosses.

 

[sunilz]

Lost again ?

 

[slippy888]

What does panauti mean

 

[RossTaylorsBox]

Turn off your monitor

 

[Teja.]

What does panauti mean

A person with the sadim touch

 

[smash84]

A person with the sadim touch

At first I read that as "sadism" touch, and I was like Kohli isn't that bad.