It was only a matter of time before Cricket Australia’s ambitious new addition to cricket, the bat-flip – which replaces the traditional coin toss – fell flat on its face. Well, in literal terms all would have been fine had it fell flat on its face but unfortunately it did not during the BBL match between Adelaide Strikers and Perth Scorchers at the Optus Stadium in Perth on Wednesday.
Nine games into the experiment of replacing coin toss by bat-flips, it required a re-toss or a re-flip as the bat neither landed on ‘Flats’ nor ‘Roofs’. It instead, landed on the edge after Strikers’ captain Colin Ingram called "roofs". Ashton Turner then jokingly turned the bat towards the ‘flat’ side claiming to have won the toss. Turner was asked to re-flip the bat and this time around, he did end up winning the toss and decided to bowl first.
The newest addition to cricket, bat-flip has attracted a fair amount of criticism since its inception. The chances of it landing on one side more often than the other because of the shape of the bat have been the biggest worry. However, Cricket Australia and the bat makers for the flip have maintained that the physics has been taken into consideration while manufacturing the bats.
The bat-flip flop show was not the only bizarre incident in the match. Adelaide Strikers’ opener Alex Carrey was run out after Scorchers took three attempts in the field.
In the match, The Scorchers pacers, led by Jhye Richardson (3/7), bowled the Strikers out for a paltry 88 before going on to chase the target with 7 wickets in hand. Scorchers did take their own time to reach the total as captain Ashton Turner played a bizarre inning of 24 off 46 balls. He faced the majority of Rashid Khan’s 24 deliveries, in which the leggie gave away only 9 runs.