IPL 2026 Qualifier 2 Toss Had to Be Redone After Match Referee Failed to Hear Riyan Parag's Call

The MCC Laws and ICC/IPL playing conditions give the match referee — rather than the on-field umpires — responsibility for overseeing the toss. The referee's role is to hear the calling captain's call before the coin lands and to confirm the result. If the referee is uncertain of the call — due to crowd noise, microphone positioning, or a call made too quietly — the regulations provide for a retoss.

This provision exists precisely to prevent the ambiguity of an unheard call. The alternative — adjudicating retrospectively on what a captain said — is more problematic than a fresh toss. The difficulty is that the retoss occurs after the first coin has landed, making the sequence visible to players, officials and viewers who can draw their own conclusions about what the first landing would have shown.

The 2011 World Cup final was the most prominent previous example. Kumar Sangakkara called without being heard; the toss was redone; India won the new coin flip and elected to bat in what became their World Cup-winning night at Wankhede Stadium. The Sri Lankan camp's version of whether Sangakkara had or had not called during the initial flip was never formally adjudicated.

Both captains wanted to bat first on a surface at Mullanpur that had been used for a league-stage match and was expected to offer more help to pace bowlers as the match progressed. The toss was therefore meaningful: first-innings total in a high-pressure knockout would shape the entire match's dynamics. With the stakes clear, Bhatt's inability to hear Parag's first call elevated a procedural moment into a potential match-defining one.

The coin had barely hit the ground before IPL 2026 Qualifier 2 was in controversy. With both captains — Gujarat Titans' Shubman Gill and Rajasthan Royals' Riyan Parag — gathered at the centre of the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium in Mullanpur on 29 May 2026, Gill flipped the coin as Parag made his call. The coin landed. The crowd and television commentary moved towards announcing a winner.

Then match referee Prakash Bhatt intervened. He indicated that he had been unable to hear Parag's call clearly enough to confirm it. The toss, he announced, would be conducted again.

The sequence was immediately controversial because the visual read of the initial toss — the coin landing, the brief exchange between the captains — had appeared to go Gujarat Titans' way. Shubman Gill's visible reaction to the retoss announcement, captured by broadcast cameras, was one of barely suppressed frustration. He was heard discussing the situation with team officials on the boundary edge. Fans at the ground and watching on broadcast channels interpreted his body language and the abruptness of Bhatt's intervention as Gill having been deprived of a toss win by a procedural error that was not his.

The second toss produced a different result. Parag — calling "heads" clearly and loudly into the broadcast microphone this time — won the retoss and elected to bat first. GT, had they won the toss as initially appeared, intended to bat first as well. That detail — that both captains wanted the same thing — made the coin's second landing particularly pointed: the result went the way that eliminated any advantage from having won the initial flip.

The incident resonated with cricket history. It recalled the 2011 ICC World Cup final, when the toss between Sri Lanka's Kumar Sangakkara and India's M.S. Dhoni had to be repeated after the match referee failed to hear the call the first time. That precedent — from the biggest match in Indian cricket history — made the procedural parallel unavoidable.

RR went on to win the match, with Shubman Gill's century ultimately insufficient to prevent Rajasthan Royals from advancing to the IPL 2026 final against Royal Challengers Bengaluru.

“I didn't hear the call. We have to redo it.”

“We wanted to bat first. I think we showed what we could do. The pitch played well.”

Rajasthan Royals batted first and posted a competitive total; Shubman Gill's century was ultimately not enough to see GT home. The toss controversy became a footnote in the match narrative — significant enough to be reported as a talking point, not significant enough to be cited as a cause of the result given the quality of cricket that followed. Gill addressed the match outcome at the post-match press conference but did not dwell on the toss incident.

The IPL as a body made no formal comment on the procedural handling. Bhatt, as match referee, operated within established regulations. Critics who felt the retoss was unnecessary argued that the first coin landing's visual outcome should have been accepted rather than voided by an official's uncertainty; defenders of the process pointed out that a clearly unheard call is the precise scenario the retoss provision was written for.