South Africa vs Zimbabwe: Proteas captain Faf du Plessis starts new trend, employs 'specialist' coin tosser to bring luck

Cricket has changed over the years and so has the captaincy styles. Faf du Plessis, South Africa captain across formats, however has gone one step too far ahead of his contemporaries. He has brought in a new phenomenon - specialist coin tosser. Faf, who has struggled to win the coin toss for some time now, has employed JP Duminy as his coin tosser. In the first T20I against Zimbabwe, Faf asked Duminy to go for flip of the toss and quite interestingly, the toss landed in South Africa’s favour. The South Africa captain has not won coin toss since March when Proteas played Test against Australians in Johannesburg. Since then, he has lost toss in 2 Tests, 3 ODIs against Sri Lanka and when he returned to the national side to play the third ODI against Zimbabwe, he lost the toss again. Frustrated of losing the coin toss, which denied his team chance of choosing what to do first, Faf decided to step away and bring in Duminy as his specialist coin tosser. Interestingly, in the T20I against Zimbabwe, Duminy was not even in the playing XI. The one question that comes to mind is, whether Faf is allowed to choose a specialist coin tosser? Technically, Faf’s ploy isn’t illegal as ICC rules clearly state that in case the captain is ’not available’, he or she can send the deputy for the toss. Speaking on his new ploy, Faf was quoted as saying by  cricket.com.au, “They say the strength of a captain is to know his weaknesses, so I brought in JP Duminy as a specialist coin tosser.”

He added more into this new development on social media, “I love what I do, important to have some fun along the way as well, especially in t20 cricket!! Might have started something here…” While there is superstition involved in what Faf has begun to do, we might soon see this catching up all over the world. Australia women’s cricket team captain Meg Lanning, who has had a bad record with the coin toss, saw Faf’s post and tagged teammate Alyssa Healy, saying, “I wish I’d known this was allowed a long time ago… You’ve got the job!”