Analytics in Cricket

The world cup fever had enveloped the whole country these past couple of weeks. With India playing and demolishing some of their biggest rivals (Australia, Pakistan and then Sri lanka in the finals), Cricket fans all over the country were rejoicing. We at Jigsaw, also got caught up in the emotion. Hence the break in our blog posts.

There has been a lot of talk about analytics in Cricket. Ever since data analytics came to India through MNCs and KPOs, Cricket fans (i.e. most Indians) have been thinking of innovative ways to apply it to their beloved game. Analytics has been successfully applied in games like baseball, basketball and even Football. However these games are much better institutionalized than Cricket and good data is not very hard to gather in Europe and the US. Cricket, on the other hand, has still not caught up with the analytics boom.

Everyone remembers Bob Woolmer as the coach who made laptops and data analysis fashionable in Cricket. Greg Chappell is another one who strongly believes in the power of data. However, use of data in Cricket is still in its infancy and a lot less sophisticated than in some of the other games. Further, it is only the national teams that are really leveraging analytics at the moment. Domestic and club teams still do not have enough good quality data to be able to draw useful insights.

Here is a collection of some interesting blogs on Cricket.

Enterprise software doesn’t have to suck – perhaps not a blog you would associate with Cricket. Yet they have a series of articles with good in-depth analysis of various facets of the game. The analysis of Don Bradman’s batting as well as a comparison between Sachin and Ponting make interesting reading.

This article explains the infamous Duckworth Lewis method to Cricket fans thorugh a series of examples.

How the Kiwis are using data mining?

A prediction for the India-Australia quarter final using decision trees.

A comparison of spin vs. Pace in Indian conditions