Win Toss, Bat First?

It is a story most Indian cricket fans are familiar with. Sourav Ganguly at the Wanderers, walking to the toss in the final of the 2003 World Cup, the first Indian captain to do so since Kapil Dev in 1983, the pitch beside him, seductively damp.

“Sourav you’ve won the toss. What will you be doing?” Michael Holding, the bowler-turned-commentator, would ask.

“We’ll have a bowl”, Ganguly would reply. His voice was small, almost lost in the noise, but you would have imagined a billion pairs of eyebrows rise. Everybody knows some version of that cricket wisdom, said to have first been uttered by WG Grace, “When you win the toss, bat. If you are in doubt, think about it, then bat. If you have very big doubts, consult a colleague, then bat.” And commentators had been banging on all morning about the need to bat first in a high-profile match like a final, irrespective of the conditions.
Ganguly of course had his reasons – his fast bowlers were a revelation throughout the tournament – but he hardly looked like a figure who inspired much calm, as he went on to explain, almost justifying, his reason.
“Ricky, would you have done anything different?” Holding would turn to Ricky Ponting, the captain of the opposing Australian team. Ponting might have been indulging in a little bit of psychological warfare, or perhaps he really did mean it, but he would respond, his face breaking out in a big grin, “No, would’ve had a bat, actually. It’s always nice to bat in big games in finals; I think so we would’ve had a bat.”

India, who had won eight matches on the trot, just unraveled under the pressure. This was best summarised in that meltdown of a first over, where Zaheer Khan, who had been such a bright spark leading to the final, conceded 15 runs (a big deal in a pre-T20 era) with plenty of no balls and wides.
Australia set India a target of 360, a record back then, and India never came anywhere close to it.

Twenty-two years later, as India enters the final of the Champions Trophy against New Zealand under very different conditions, a similar question hangs in the air. There won’t be Holding on the microphone, and Mitchell Santner is too nice a chap to want to indulge in any kind of mental warfare, but will Rohit Sharma want to bat first or bowl first?

Much time has passed since that particular final. India has been in ICC finals multiple times, won World Cups – both the 50 over and 20 over versions – and all the current crop of players have come of age at a time when India is the predominant force in world cricket. They don’t get fazed by finals anymore. They thrive on it.

But do you still go by conventional wisdom – bat first, whatever the conditions – or do you consider where your strength, and that of the opposition, lies?

Going purely by the conditions on offer in Dubai so far, batting first seems to be the no-brainer. The pitches in Dubai haven’t been belters by any stretch of imagination. Even the fresh pitch offered for the Australia-India semi-final, while better for batting than the previous ones, wasn’t exactly the sort of track where you could boss the bowlers around. Run scoring will likelier get harder as the game progresses. So why wouldn’t you bat first, and let the spinners, especially in the absence of dew, take over?

Batting first – or rather bowling second – definitely works to the strength of India’s spinners, who you could argue have been the main point of difference between India and the rest of their opponents. The variety of this four spin attack have blown their opponents away throughout this tournament, especially in games when they have bowled second.

But there is one reason India might be tempted to consider batting second – or New Zealand might even consider putting India in first – and that is to give (and in New Zealand’s case, avoid giving) Virat Kohli and Co a target. It is not that India is poor at setting a target, but they are especially good when they are chasing. Just look at India’s performance in this tournament. They have convincingly won all the games when they have had a target in front of them. The only time their batters floundered a bit, although they still won the game, in no small measure to Varun Chakravarthy’s mystery spin, was their match against New Zealand, when India batted first, and got restricted to 249. Kohli has been one of the greatest chasers in ODI history, and he’s again regaining that touch as he comes to the deep end of this tournament. Cast your mind further back, to the 2023 World Cup final in Ahmedabad, when India batted first, and no happy memories lie there.

So, what do you do – bat or bowl first? Apart from the condition and the look of the pitch, it might come down to which India values more at this finale – and which New Zealand wants to avoid more – India’s batters chasing a target, or India’s spinners using the scoreboard’s pressure and applying the squeeze.

batChampions Trophy 2025cricketICC Champions TrophyIndia-AustraliaIndia-New ZealandRohit SharmaSourav GangulytossVirat Kohli