Showing posts with label T20 Leagues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label T20 Leagues. Show all posts
Thursday, July 14, 2022

Kill ODI Cricket; Let Tests and T20 Cricket Rule the World


Posted by Q at Thursday, July 14, 2022 No Comments
Growing up in the 80s and 90s the cricket staple used to consist of multination tri-series, quadrangular tournaments, and even six-nation tournaments. Ofcourse there were World Cups every 4 years and bilateral tours consisting of Tests and ODIs, but these multination tournaments used to generate a lot of buzz.

They were like mini world cups. Pakistan and India did not tour each other back then either. But they would frequently play in Sharjah as part of an AustralAsia Cup, a Rothmans Trophy, a Sharjah Cup, a Sharjah Champions Trophy.

Besides the two multination ODI series in Sharjah every year, there was also the annual World Series of Cricket played in Australia (aka Carlton & United Series, CB Series, VB series, etc.), which involved three teams compete for the trophy.

Besides Australia, the likes of Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and England also hosted multination ODI tournaments in that era.

Even unlikely venues like Toronto, Singapore, Malaysia, and Kenya hosted multination ODI tournaments in the 90s.

Those were the best days of ODI cricket!

That is when ODI cricket was exciting. In between world cups, we got to watch the big teams play mini tournaments. ODIs had some context.

With the advent of T20 cricket, the significance of ODIs has diminished significantly. 

Let alone the fact that T20 leagues take up most of the cricket calendar; the biggest problem is the fanbase. ODI cricket is not exciting any more.

When you can watch a more exciting brand of cricket that produces a result in three and a half hours, why would you sit in front of the TV for 8 hours? 

I am a cricket nut. I used to watch every single delivery of an ODI. I still do when it is the World Cup or the Champions Trophy. But bilateral ODI cricket, I just cannot watch. 

I prefer a T20 match, league or international, over an ODI any day.

And that is really the future.

ODI cricket is dying in my view.

Unless multination ODI tournaments are brought back, ODI cricket will be in the grave very soon.

I see the future with only two formats: Tests and T20s.

Test cricket is still very exciting and creates some very interesting battles over 5 days. However, when it comes to limited overs cricket, the T20 format is killing ODIs.

And that is ok in my view.

We all need to evolve.

Cricket is no different.

Year round T20 leagues, a T20 World Cup every two years, bilateral test tours, and a World Test Championship every two years sounds like a great future for cricket.

With the amount of talent available in some nations, and the ability of others to develop talent pools, I will not be surprised if the T20 and Test calendars ran simultaneously.

Nations can develop two very different talent pools - one for test cricket and the other for T20 cricket.

Teams like England and India are already doing this where their red ball and white ball teams are involved in international tours at the same time.

Let each country have their T20 league. Let T20 cricketers participate in whatever league they want. Limit bilateral tours for T20 cricket. Maybe have 1 or 2 of them just before the T20 World Cup to fine tune the national teams.

Let Test cricket run in parallel.

T20 cricket is the way forward for associate nations also. The likes of Afghanistan, Ireland, Scotland, Netherlands, UAE, and even frontier markets where cricket wants to expand like the USA and China have greater potential to compete in the T20 format, relative to ODIs or Tests.

Let cricket expand through T20 leagues and T20 World Cups.

I have not seen the exact numbers, but I believe the number of ODIs played every year has reduced drastically every year over the past decade.

South Africa have already cancelled an ODI tour to Australia in January 2023 due to it clashing with their new T20 league!

Who even watches bilateral ODIs now?

I think the 2023 ODI World Cup should be the last one. Let ODIs die and let cricket live through T20s and Tests.

It will ease scheduling concerns as well.

We literally have a T20 league running 365 days a year. 

The BBL, UAE T20 and the new SA league in January, the PSL in February-March, the IPL in April - May, ECB's League and The 100 in June-July, the CPL in August, and back to the BBL and UAE T20 in December.

If these leagues want the best white ball players available, then where will they find the time to play ODIs?

Players should not be put in this difficult position at all.

The September-October-November window with no T20 leagues should be left for nations to play a couple of bilateral international T20 series, followed by the T20 World Cup.

This gives you a year-round T20 Cricket calendar, which sounds extremely exciting!

At the same time, test tours can continue simultaneously since the test teams will be built around completely different talent pools.

In my mind and on paper, this all sounds like a fabulous way forward for cricket.

Now over to the ICC and the cricket boards to implement it!

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Monday, April 8, 2019

A Data Analyst Looking to Change the Way Teams Analyze Cricketers


Posted by Q at Monday, April 08, 2019 Pitched (14)
Dan Weston is a data analyst who is trying to break cricket's traditionalists and conformists with a numbers based approach. Here he talks about the mistakes that T20 teams make in ignoring key number based data.

Think about T20 cricket leagues around the world and what comes straight to your mind? Sixes, boundaries galore, fireworks, music, cheerleaders and dancers, cricketers mixing with celebrities, and so on. Cricket's T20 leagues around the world, and the IPL in particular, are big entertainment extravaganzas that mixes the glitz and the glamour with cricket!

 Twenty years ago, it would not have even been considered cricket by the purists.

 The same purists today believe that cricket should be played according to a certain tradition. And the same goes for analysis. Their ways of analyzing the game are also traditional.

 Playing conditions and formats have changed over the years, and the way the game is played now is also different from how it was in the past eras. Similarly, the way the game is analyzed should also change and that is what data analyst Dan Weston is doing.

 He does this for all countries where cricket is played, including India, where the IPL is currently being staged, a tournament where the Chennai Super Kings are favorites on the back of their supremacy in the league over the past decade and more.

 Check out online bookmakers or try betting with Betway and you will see how highly rated the Super Kings are.

 “Quite a few coaches are old school, so it’s difficult to get them to buy into what you’re offering,” says Weston. “There are just not enough fresh voices. Cricket is full of inane data like: ‘This is the slowest century by an English batsman on a Tuesday.’ It’s completely worthless.”

 “If a bloke like myself can sit in an office and produce decent theories and data about T20 cricket, then I see no reason why a team with bigger resources can’t do the same,” he says.

 This has resulted in Weston limiting his public data analysis.

 “I wrote an analysis of 10 English players who would perform well in the subcontinent and the top five all got signed,” he says.
Weston analyzes cricketers across formats and across different playing conditions around the world. He uses his data and numbers collated through millions of ball by ball data to predict certain outcomes for players.

Weston became a cricket analyst after producing exhaustive data on tennis, which he utilized to bet on tennis matches. Once he realized that his tennis data and analysis could be transferred to cricket, he figures that he could make cricket analysis more suitable to today's times by applying his learning.

According to Weston, errors being made in the sport. He says “you name it, they’ll make that mistake, be it selection, recruitment, in-game tactics”. 

This led him to set up a data analytics business, which will support cricket teams, players, and agents by eliminating errors and providing more accurate and suitable data to make the decisions required to succeed.

Weston's model is complicated.

He analyzes each player individually by going through his recorded ball-by-ball data and makes adjustments to the players' average, strike rate, economy rate, etc. based on recency, opposition, and playing conditions. Based on this analysis, Weston determines the expected performance for each player for an upcoming tournament.

Basically, Weston produces a comprehensive assessment of how a player will perform in an upcoming competition, based on which he recommends players to teams around the world, including for the IPL, Big Bash, T20 Blast, and others.

“Cricket is a conditions-driven sport,” he says, “so a T20 Blast match at Canterbury will be a pace-orientated affair, whereas in Dhaka it’s going to be spinner-friendly and low-scoring. If a batsman performs well at Canterbury, does that really apply to a match in Dhaka? Probably not. There’s limited relevance. So I analyse how historically similar players have made the transition from one league to another. I might be asked to find a pace bowler for the T20 Blast, where an Australian will be quite highly-rated, as opposed to the IPL, where they haven’t thrived as much as their reputation would suggest because of the quality of the league.”

Weston says that what he does can easily be replicated by teams.

“Lots of high-profile players are signed based on reputation rather than current ability. Take Brendon McCullum: he’s got a poor record against spin bowling, he doesn’t keep wicket anymore, yet subcontinental teams are signing him as a marquee player. It makes no sense whatsoever."

“Then you see players signed based on reputation from another format."

“So Sam Curran played very well against India in Test matches last summer and has subsequently got a mega IPL deal despite the fact that his T20 data is not particularly impressive. I will continue to argue that he is an anti-moneyball signing.”

Weston believes that at times teams tend to cram a lot of versatile players into one team, which decreases the impact they can have on a game. Weston in fact has the data and numbers that prove the effectiveness of specialists in T20 cricket.

“You don’t want to stick an all-rounder at No. 9 because he’s just not going to bat,” he says. “The average No. 8 faces about seven balls per match, and the average No. 9 faces about four balls per match. If those guys are required to face more than the average, your top order batsmen haven’t done their job properly."

“For No. 9, 10 and 11 you just want an out-and-out specialist bowler who would perhaps then be capable of playing a five-ball cameo. If you pick too many all-rounders you end up compromising where they bowl, because often they turn out not to be very good death bowlers.”

It is quite strange that even with such brilliant insights, Weston is seeking out more work rather than turning it down. He says that he knows that teams from around the world were using his work without engaging him as a consultant.

“That includes guys like Wayne Madsen, who had never had an overseas contract before."

“A lot of the time people say they don’t have the financial capabilities to pay for my work, but I don’t buy into that theory at all. You can’t tell me that a cricket team has no financial wastage."

“If they were to use my data, they would be able to release a player and free up the money to pay for a consultant. It’s an indictment of the game at the moment.”

Weston believes that cricket coaching and analysis is starting to change. He believes that younger coaches will bring on more emphasis on data analysis, the kind that he produces.

“I think things will change in the next decade or so,” he says. “We’ll find that cricket will turn to much more of a baseball-orientated, stats-driven sport.”

When this does happen, it will lead everyone back to the efforts of one Dan Weston.

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