Dew decides more limited overs games than the surface does

A wet ball takes away spin, seam and grip in the second innings, and the schedule keeps pretending this is fair.

By the fortieth over the ball is wet, the seam is soft, the spinner is drying his hand on a towel between deliveries, and the contest has quietly stopped being a contest. This happens on a large share of evenings in a large number of venues and the sport treats it as weather rather than as a structural fault.

What dew actually does is specific. Moisture on the ball kills grip, so a finger spinner loses revolutions and a wrist spinner loses control before he loses turn. It kills reverse swing outright, because reverse needs a dry rough side. It makes the ball skid on rather than grip the surface, so the pitch you spent five days preparing becomes largely irrelevant after sunset. And it makes fielding harder in a way that is invisible until somebody drops a routine catch and gets criticised for it.

The result is that the toss, which everyone agrees should not decide matches, gets handed enormous power at any ground where dew is reliable. Bowl first, expect the ball to behave for two hours, then bat second with a ball the opposition cannot grip. That is not a tactical advantage. That is a different game being played by each side.

Groundstaff fight it with sprays and ropes dragged across the outfield at the innings break, which help a little and are basically a rearguard action. The real answer is scheduling, and scheduling is set by broadcast slots, so the answer will not be adopted.

I would rather see the toss replaced at dew affected venues than see another semi final decided by a coin. The visiting side chooses, or the choice alternates through a tournament, or the match starts ninety minutes earlier and finishes before the temperature drops. Any of those is more defensible than what happens now.

The argument against is that conditions have always varied and that adapting to them is part of the sport, which I accept for pitches and for wind and for altitude. Dew is different because it arrives at a fixed time and affects only one side, in one direction, every time. That is not variation.

That is a handicap applied by the clock, and we schedule the clock ourselves.