Watch: KL Rahul's Change Of Strategy Helps India Break 20-Toss Losing Streak In ODIs
A huge cheer from the crowd at the ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium followed as soon as India broke their 20-toss losing streak.
India on Saturday finally managed to win a toss in ODI cricket after a long time. The side lost 20 tosses on the trot, before the coin landed in their favour in the 21st game - third and deciding ODI against South Africa in Visakhapatnam. It is interesting to note that KL Rahul - India's captain for the series - opted for a change of hand while tossing the coin in the air, and that worked for him. In the first two matches, he went ahead with his right hand and ended up losing both tosses. Rahul flipped the coin with his left hand in the third game and won it.
Watch it here:
Toss #TeamIndia have won the toss and elected to field first.
— BCCI (@BCCI) December 6, 2025
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A huge cheer from the crowd at the ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium followed as soon as India broke their 20-toss losing streak.
For a moment, presenter and former India player Murali Karthik could not even talk to Rahul in the middle right after the result of the toss came out.
"Is it me or is it you," asked Karthik. Rahul replied, "I think it's you, you should do more tosses."
As India lost their 20th ODI toss on December 3, the cricket world was scratching its head over the fact that the probability of a team losing 20 coin tosses in a row was 0.000000954. The second-best ODI record in the unwanted streak is 11, held by the Netherlands.
The unprecedented run of losing coin tosses in the format began for India during the 2023 ODI World Cup final and continued under multiple captains (Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, and Shubman Gill), making the probability of it occurring an astonishing 1 in 1,048,576.
Talking about the third ODI, India fought back well through Prasidh Krishna and Kuldeep Yadav after Quinton de Kock struck his 23rd hundred, keeping South Africa to a modest 270.
Krishna and Kuldeep shone for the hosts with four wickets each to their credit.
India Cricket Team
South Africa Cricket Team
KL Rahul
Murali Kartik