Winning the toss was once close to a decisive advantage in some conditions. Improvements in ground technology have steadily reduced how much it is worth.
What the toss originally decided
On uncovered pitches, rain during a match could transform a good batting surface into an almost unplayable one within an hour of sunshine.
A captain who chose correctly could bat on a dry surface and then bowl on a wet one, an advantage no amount of skill could offset.
The decision therefore carried enormous weight, and matches were sometimes effectively settled by which captain called correctly on the first morning.
Covers and drainage removed the extremes
Pitches are now covered whenever rain threatens, so the dramatic mid-match transformation that made the toss so valuable simply does not occur.
Outfield drainage has improved to the point that play resumes quickly after rain, which further reduces the chance of one side facing sharply different conditions.
What remains is the ordinary deterioration of a surface over several days, which is predictable and can be planned for by both teams.
Preparation has narrowed the gap further
Modern curators produce surfaces designed to stay usable for the full duration, because a match ending early is a commercial and sporting failure.
That intent tends to flatten the first-innings advantage, since a pitch built to last does not offer extravagant early assistance to bowlers.
Where the advantage persists it is usually late in the match rather than early, which shifts the calculation toward the fourth innings.
The advantage that remains
Batting last on a worn surface against spin is still demonstrably harder, and captains in the longer format still generally choose to bat when conditions allow.
In limited-overs cricket the balance depends on dew, which can make the ball difficult to grip in the second innings and hands a real edge to the side chasing.
These are conditional advantages rather than automatic ones, and reading them correctly is a skill separate from the luck of the call itself.
Proposals to remove it
Some competitions have experimented with giving the visiting captain the choice outright, on the reasoning that it discourages extreme home preparation.
The argument against is that the toss is part of the game's structure, and that removing chance from one place tends to move it somewhere else.
The debate continues without resolution, largely because the size of the advantage varies so much between venues that no single rule fits all of them.
