Lancashire’s joint pre-season tour with the Thunder has featured a novel method of deciding which side gets to choose whether they want to bat or bowl first.
The tour – which Lancashire are describing as the first ever joint men’s and women’s tour undertaken by a first-class county – has seen both sides combine a mixture of pre-season training and match practice.
In both sides’ games against the UAE’s respective national sides, instead of the toss, the choice as to whether to bat or bowl first was given to the captain who came closest to correctly answering a cricket-based trivia question.
For the women’s fixture, Thunder skipper Ellie Threlkeld and her counterpart Chaya Mughal were asked to guess Beth Mooney’s ICC ODI batting rating. Mughal answered 743 before Threlkeld followed up with a guess of 767 – the actual answer was 724, meaning that UAE won the toss.
In the men’s game, the two captains – Alishan Sharafu and Keaton Jennings – were asked to guess how many ODI wickets Shane Warne took over the course of his career. Sharafu, guessing first, answered 274. For Jennings, this was no guessing game. He confidently answered 293, the correct tally. Jennings, like Mughal in the first game, opted to bat first. Thunder prevailed in their match, chasing down 99 in the final over, while Lancashire lost by five wickets in their fixture.
How about captains doing a bit of homework to win the toss? Or send the smartest team member for toss. Interesting concept pic.twitter.com/EKqGjPItd2
— Sarang Bhalerao (@bhaleraosarang) March 11, 2022
