India's luck continues to desert them as they achieve feat with odds of 16,384 to 1 during fourth Test against England

India’s poor luck with with tosses extended to the fourth Test against England in Manchester on Wednesday , with skipper Shubman Gill calling incorrectly for the fourth time in as many matches in the ongoing tour. Ben Stokes, his English counterpart, thus elected to field under overcast conditions at Old Trafford, a venue where India have not won a Test till date and where they have to win if they are to win the inaugural Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy at the end of the tour.

India’s luck continues to desert them when it comes to tosses

The lost toss at Old Trafford on Wednesday, incidentally, was India’s 14th on the trot in international cricket. And the mindblowing fact here is that the odds of a team losing 14 tosses in a row are 16,384/1.

Heads or tails? India have now lost 14 consecutive international coin tosses...

The odds of that happening are 16,384/1 🤯 pic.twitter.com/CaNLKme8V7

— Sky Sports Cricket (@SkyCricket) July 23, 2025

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For context, the odds of Leicester City winning the 2015-16 Premier League were 5000/1, making the Indian cricket team’s achievement even more incredible, albeit in an unwanted sense.

Incidentally, India were facing England when they had last won a toss in any format of the game, although it was in a T20I on home soil earlier this year. It was the third T20I at Rajkot’s Niranjan Shah Stadium on 28 January where T20I skipper Suryakumar Yadav had opted to field after winning the toss.

The Men in Blue, however, would suffer their only defeat of the five-match series in that game, losing by 26 runs after being set 172 to win .

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India would lose both tosses in the last two matches of the series as well as in the three-match ODI series against the same team and the five matches in the ICC Champions Trophy (ODI) that followed – all of which had Rohit Sharma as the skipper.

Coming back to the ongoing Test, India were off to a promising start at Old Trafford as openers Yashasvi Jaiswal and KL Rahul steered the visitors to 78/0 at lunch. The hosts, however, fought back in the afternoon session by getting rid of the top-three, reducing them to 149/3 at lunch.