"Don't know what's going on in this country," Matthew Breetzke grumbled, not entirely seriously, on television in Faisalabad on Thursday. "Tails," he had called at the toss before the second ODI. The coin came down heads up.

The same thing had happened to Breetzke at the Iqbal in the first match of the series on Wednesday. And to Donovan Ferreira in all three T20Is in Lahore and Rawalpindi. And to Aiden Markram in the Tests in Pindi and Lahore.

Once more in the last match of South Africa's tour - the third ODI in Faisalabad on Saturday - and Pakistan's Shan Masood, Salman Agha and Shaheen Shah Afridi will have won all eight tosses. That's six different captains, in seven different games so far, all getting the same result. Maybe Breetzke has a point.

The toss is an anomaly in today's data-driven game because it cannot be coached. No consultant joins a team promising to help the captain flip a coin more successfully when they're at home, or to help them decode the home captain's toss technique. No analyst is able to come up with reasons why its heads rather than tails, or vice versa, no matter how many stats they pour over.

How much does the toss matter to the result? Of all the 7,356 men's internationals played before Wednesday's match, 5,058 were won by the team who also won the toss. Winning the toss and losing the match has happened 4,886 times. That's 68.76% compared to 66.42%, a difference of 2.34%.

Sides who win the toss going on to earn victory holds true when we split the mass of internationals into formats, but the variations, well, vary. It's 37.08% in Tests, 48.09% in ODIs and 48.37% in T20Is. Winning the toss but losing the match has happened in 32.36% of Tests, 47.38% of ODIs and 47.98% of T20Is. The differentials are 4.72% for Tests, 0.71% for ODIs and 0.39% for T20Is.

That the biggest gap should occur in Test cricket is understandable because it is the format where conditions matter most. And that it is the smallest in T20Is, the most unpredictable form of the game.

The toss doesn't often make the news, and rightfully so. Because it isn't news in most circumstances. An exception is when the conditions mean it is likely to be key to the result of the match - like it was in the first Test of South Africa's tour, when the ball turned from the first hour of the match and spun more acutely as the game wore on. Masood declined to let Pakistan bat first, South Africa were bowled out for 269 and 183, and 34 of the 40 wickets in the home side's 93-win fell to spin.

The second Test was played on a significantly more balanced pitch, and South Africa won by eight wickets - albeit they needed only 12.3 overs of the fourth innings to chase down their target of 68. Spinners claimed an even greater share of the success - 28 of the 32 wickets - but the contest between bat and ball was fairer.

Between Tests, Ryan Rickelton poo-pooed the notion of scrapping the toss in favour of allowing the visiting captain to decide whether to bat or field first, which was trialled in county cricket from 2016 to 2019.

"I don't think that's a great idea," Rickelton told a press conference. "It's the cornerstone of Test cricket; teams play to their strengths and their conditions.

"It's [Pakistan's] strength. That's what they need to do at home. And we've got to rise to the occasion and take them on in their backyard, and make sure that regardless of the outcome of the toss we have the capabilities to influence the game, even if we're batting second and fourth."

Another scenario that makes the toss stick out is when a team loses a string of them. As South Africa have. It will come as no comfort to Breetzke that, even if he gets it wrong again on Saturday, things have been worse. But not by much.

South Africa lost nine consecutive tosses from September 2019 to January 2020. The first five of those matches were two T20Is and three Tests in India, when the captains were Quinton de Kock and Faf du Plessis. The visitors' sole win came in the second T20I. With the Test series lost, Du Plessis brought Temba Bavuma to the middle with him before the third Test in Ranchi. A change of tosser, Du Plessis reckoned, might bring a change of luck.

"Tails," Bavuma called, just like Breetzke did on Thursday. And, just like on Thursday, the coin came down heads up. "It was not meant to be; all we can do is smile," Du Plessis said at the time.

The experiment wasn't repeated when the South Africans went home to face England in four Tests. They won by 107 runs in Centurion despite losing the toss, but were beaten in the other three matches. The streak was snapped in the first ODI at Newlands, where De Kock won the toss and his team were victors by seven wickets.

South Africa have had two other spells of seven successive lost tosses, and from April to June 2021 they got it wrong eight times. But they're a long way from the world record.

India suffered from this malaise in all of the two T20Is, eight ODIs and five Tests they played at home, in Dubai and in England from January to July this year. Their luckless captains in those games were Suryakumar Yadav, Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill. It's a testament to the diversity and quality of India's teams that they won a dozen of those games and drew another. Two defeats despite 15 straight lost tosses in three different sets of conditions? That's what strength looks like.

South Africa haven't been as successful in Pakistan. Their eight-wicket win on Wednesday, built on De Kock's undefeated 123 off 119 with eight fours and seven sixes, his 22nd ODI century in his 157th innings, and his first hundred in 736 days - 721 of which he spent in retirement from the format - was only their third victory in their seven matches on this tour. Another win on Saturday, and no-one will remember the toss.