Daniel Vettori's got the touch. Photo / Paul Estcourt
He's a fledgling at international one-day captaincy compared with his predecessor, but Daniel Vettori is proving himself phenomenally good at coin tossing.
The New Zealand skipper is developing a remarkably good record of winning the toss in ODIs going into today's second match against Bangladesh at Napier's McLean
Park.
In 18 matches, Vettori has either called correctly or heard his opposite get it wrong, 14 times out of 18 games, giving him a 77.78 per cent success rate. That gives him New Zealand's best statistic in modern times.
The only person who compares favourably since New Zealand began taking part in the Tri-Series in Australia in 1980 is Mark Burgess. But the Auckland batsman only led New Zealand in eight ODIs, winning the toss six times - and winning only two games.
The other skippers, from Geoff Howarth onwards, have mixed records.
Howarth, regarded as a terrific captain during the era when the one-day game turned from an interesting diversion from test cricket to full scale stand-alone entertainment at the start of the 1980s, got it right just 23 times out of 60 matches in charge.
Yet only Vettori (10 wins, seven losses, one washout from 18 games) and John Wright (16 victories, 15 losses in 31 games) can stand alongside Howarth as captains with better than 50 per cent match-winning records since 1980.
Howarth led New Zealand to 31 wins and 26 losses from 1980-85.
New Zealand's longest-serving captain, Stephen Fleming, who preceded Vettori, won the battle of the flipping coin 106 times out of 218.
Martin Crowe, Jeremy Coney and Wright also finished in the black - although only just - while Lee Germon and Ken Rutherford were marginally in the red in the tossing department.
The most hopeless coin tosser was Jeff Crowe, now one of the International Cricket Council's match referees.
He won the toss just five times out of 16.
