Home Advantage and the Toss: Some Evidence from One-Day Cricket

This paper examines evidence regarding home-field advantage in the English one-day county cricket league together with a particular focus on the importance of winning the pre-match toss of a coin to determine a team’s strategic decision to bat first or second. Following a brief examination of the concept of, and evidence for, home advantage in professional team sports we describe the main features of limited overs cricket, as played during our study period, together with the components of our dataset. We then present our model and interpret the empirical results and their implications