Talking to Sussex supporters over the last week, they were concerned, understandably, at the loss against Gloucestershire.

Most of the concerns were over why, when we had won the toss, we had inserted the opposition to give them first whack on what appeared to be a flat track.

The first thing I can say maybe a clich, but hindsight most definitely is a wonderful thing. So too is sitting in your armchair at home, switching on teletext, seeing Gloucestershire piling on the runs, rolling your eyebrows and thinking here we go again, Colwyn Bay mark two.

The point I'm trying to make is that without actually being there and seeing the conditions at the time of the toss and without being able to see into the mind of the captain and to gauge his gut feeling that fielding was the correct thing to do, we are not in a position to be able to criticise the decision.

Accounts from various players have been of the view that it was slightly overcast on the first morning of the game and there were one or two greenish tinges to the wicket.

With a good forecast for the week the pitch would only have got better and so giving our bowlers first go sounded like the best way of making the most of the conditions. We dropped catches too and were unlucky to have our wicketkeeper disabled for the day. No excuses but these points serve to augment the decision to field first.

In my opinion winning a toss is not as important as people often think. It is possible for a team to win whatever the conditions. The bottom line is that if one team bats better, bowls better and catches better than the other, then nine times out of ten they will win.

There you go, there is my brilliant psychoanalysis of the game of cricket, Freud himself would be proud of it.

It may be a simple viewpoint but cricket is a simple game. You hear commentators, coaches and analysts say it all the time - do the basics well and you'll succeed.

Richard Montgomerie has one of the simplest techniques around. He blocks the good ball with a straight, honest, broad, public school blade and waits patiently for the bowler to bowl in his favourite areas (mainly on the leg side) when he knows he will score runs.

Trescothick appears to have a similar mentality when he bats and it is serving him well too at the moment. Take the best bowler in the world, Glenn McGrath. Does he try and bowl ten different variations of swing and seam?

In a six over spell, he would probably bowl 32 of his stock deliveries on a good length on off stump trying to hit the seam. The other four might be bouncers or yorkers just so the batsman knows he's in a contest.

Even Shane Warne, who has an infinite variety of deliveries up his sleeve, bowls a simple leg-spinner most of the time.

If I think back to all the times we have lost a Championship game in the last couple of years in each one there has been an aspect of our game that has been poor.

At Colwyn Bay last year, for example, we inserted Glamorgan and they made 700. The wicket was damp to begin with but we didn't bowl well.

Then when we batted, poor shot selection brought about our demise. We did the simple things wrong. There are always reasons for a win or a loss that go way beyond the simple matter of the toss of a coin.