Statistical Analysis of Cricket Matches

statistical Analysis of renovate MatchesAbstractThe effect of playing home or a itinerary and m whatever other elements, such as thrash about depression or second, good-natured or losing the toss, gain been hypothesised as influencing the outcome of major(ip) play matches. Anecdot al unityy, it has lots been noted that Sub classicalal sides (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) tend to per chassis much(prenominal) snap off on the Subcontinent than away from it. In 2009, Joshi published an article in the kinglike Meteorological Society Journal Weather which suggested that the prevailing hold conditions were much than important to the offsprings of the Ashes demonstrate serial in Australia than were the relative strengths of the squads.In this paper, centering on results of mens adept Day planetary (ODI) matches involving England, I investigate the bound to which a number of positionors including playing home or away (or the continent of the venue), bat ten or sectoring premier(prenominal), shape upning or losing the toss, the immoral temperature and humidness during the back up, the condition of the pitch, and the strength of to s ever so all toldy one squad ups top batting and roll resources bring the outcome of matches. I employ a variety of Statistical techniques, and close up that the continent of the venue does appear to be a major factor affecting the result, but winning the toss does not. In the second fortune of this study, I depart use any significant factors to attempt to manufacture a Binary Logistic Regression Model that go away telephone the chance of England winning at diverse stages of a feisty. The study in like manner looks at using this model to consider different gambling techniques to opine which would squander created the or so profit for past games.Introduction1.1 Understanding the basic principle of ODIsA One-Day International (ODI) is a game of cricket mingled with twain Internat ional squads. The team that wins a coin toss has the choice to every bat or bowl in the set-back innings. The team batting first induct a upper limit of 50 overs or 10 wickets to realise as many transcends as they can, this is more comm broad(a)ly cognise as setting a total. An over consists of 6 balls from one plug hat and the following over must be 6 balls from a different bowler from the opposite end of the pitch. Each bowler is giveed a maximum of 10 overs each. The first innings will be complete when either all 300 legitimate deliveries live been bowled or all 10 wickets have been lost. The team batting second then have 50 overs and 10 wickets to score more runs than their opponents, this is referred to as chasing a total.1.2 History of cricket formats play has been a game played in England for hundreds of years, and it is believed that it may date back equalizer to 1500. However, the earliest records avail competent atomic number 18 from the early 17th century. a t that place ar currently 3 commonaltyplace formats of the sport played at International level and below. The longest format of the game is either called a stpelting Match in International cricket or a magnificent match in domestic cricket. prove matches are played surrounded by two nations which have reached Test status. This is determined by the International Cricket Council (ICC). In a test match, both teams have two innings each to accumulate more runs than their opponents. Test matches have a maximum cadence allowance of 5 days, if the result of the game is not already headlandstrong at the end of day 5, then the match ends as a draw. by means ofout history, there have been games that have lasted more than 5 days, until now in recent years this has been a strict guideline. The nearly renowned case of an extended test match was when England toured South Africa in 1939 the game was extended to the 9th day to produce a result, however when England required only 41 more runs to win, the England frauds had to leave the ground to catch the last analyse home and the match ended in a draw. (sahistory, 2014) First-class is a term that answer fors the highest level of domestic cricket played within each of the cricketing nations. Each nation has a first-class competition which must in like manner consist of two innings each and last at least 3-days. In England, first-class cricket is a 4-day competition played between 18 counties. This was the only format of the game without the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. County cricket is where all England cricketers develop their game, and Moores and Tickner (2016) say that The mark to improvement is not to radically overhaul our county governing body. It is to embrace it. This is regarding ongoing controversy towards the argument that the English county corpse is at fault for Englands failures. A 2015 article written by Kevin Pietersen entitle Broken county system is damaging our national side is a k ey example of this, where Pietersen argues that bowlers arent quick enough and in like manner much cricket makes county players fatigued. However, Moores and Tickner are stating that there are many talented cricketers in the county circuit, who are unmarked due to their lack of international hold out, and the only way for them to gain experience is to be given a chance. They argue that the blame for Englands failures often comes through not using the top county cricketers, rather than the county system itself.The first ever official Test match was in 1877, when England narrowly lost to Australia at the Melbourne cricket ground. Then 5 years later, when England lost to Australia at home, The uninfected Times printed a mock obituary of English cricket which reason that The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. (Lords, 2016). This was the start of the infamous Ashes series that is still contested today between the 2 nations.Limited Overs cricket was first introdu ced in 1951 in a small town in Kerala, India. KV Kellappan Thampuran formed the Tripunithura Cricket club before coming up with the idea of playing a one-day game. (Kerala Cricket Association, 2016). It was adopted into County Cricket in England in 1962 when the Midlands knock-out cup took place between Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Nottingham and was 65 overs per side. In 1969, there was a change in the law which allowed more sporting events to take place on a Sunday. (Miller and Tickner, 2016). This was an opening for Sunday League cricket, where counties would play a hold overs game on the Sunday following a first-class match in the week. The number of overs per side have since been minify to 60, 50, 45 and 40. (BBC cricket, 2006).The first ODI was played on 5 January 1971 when the first 3 days of a test match between Australia and England were washed out, so a one-off 1-day game consisting of 40 8-ball overs was arranged. This game was played with w stumblee kits and a red ball. Soon after this, ODI cricket caught on and became increasingly popular towards the end of the 1970s, the World Series Cricket was organised and the 1979 season byword the start of coloured kits with a white ball and 50 6-ball overs in ODIs. This was an unpopular decision at the time as it was only through with(p) to fit in more advert breaks. (Jackson, 2014). However, these advert breaks allowed more capital to come into the game to be spent on, not only player development, but players wages to make cricket a more sympathetic profession. Until these advert breaks came in, most cricketers would be working two jobs and now that cricket could be their main priority, there was a big plus in terms of fitness, technique and overall development of the game.ODIs have changed a surge since the 1970s there are now fielding restrictions, powerplays and other factors that have led to tons increasing within 50 overs. In the eighties a score of 250 in 60 overs was th ought of as a good total, but whilst this study is winning place, in 2017, teams are aspect to set a total of 300 in most matches. under is a table taken from howstat.com showing the top 20 ODI scores in history.Table Top 20 ODI team totals. Taken from howstat.com inaugurate you can see that all the top 20 scores have been in the last 11 years, even though ODIs have been roughly for 46 years and ODIs in the 20th Century were often 55 or 60 overs. For this reason, when I investigate factors that crop the chance of England winning an ODI, I only take data from the 21st Century as I believe the statistics from earlier ODIs are almost irrelevant to todays game.Twenty20 (T20) cricket is the newest cricket format. Each side has just 20 overs each to score more runs than their opponents. However, the number of resources (wickets) stays the same, allowing for a more attacking air of play throughout the whole game since losing wickets is not as defamatory to the team. The cricketing authorities were looking to boost the games popularity with the younger generation in reception to dwindling crowds and reduced sponsorship. (Cricketnext, 2009).1.3 Why ODIs?There are several(prenominal) reasons I have chosen to use ODI statistics rather than Test matches or T20s. The overall aim of the study is not only to find significant factors that influence the outcome of cricket matches, but besides to use these factors to be able to predict the chance of England winning a game. I believe that Test matches end in a draw too often to found a win predictor, and Frank Duckworth (2001) said one of the great weaknesses of first class cricket is that the most usual result is a draw. This doesnt mean that the two sides have performed evenly, but that the game was unfinished when time ran out. Through collecting data from cricinfo.com and taking the means of draws per country in test match history tells us that there is a 32.07% chance that a Test match will end in a draw. This c ould be due to defensive tactical manoeuvre as the game lasts much long-dated than other forms of cricket. Bad weather conditions can also take a whole day or more out of the match and this bring together with the more defensive style can make it harder to get a result. From the first ODI game up until the 19th July 2016, 33 out of 3764 games resulted in a tie, meaning that less than 1% (0.87%) of matches have been tied. This is clearly a much lower percentage than in test matches. Also, when an ODI produces this result, it is usually because the game deserves to be a tie as the two sides have performed equally rather than any other factors. The less ties result will allow me to build a win predictor more accurately.T20 is a comparatively new format of cricket where teams go away from typical tactics and playing proper cricket shots and instead use a hit out or get out style of play. This means that it is much harder to predict who will win a T20 game as one good individual perfo rmance can all but win the game. For example, if one batsman scored 100 in a T20 match, even if the rest of the team only gained another 30 runs, a total of one hundred thirty could still win the game. Comparatively, in ODIs much more of a team effort is required, and a sustained performance is needed to win the game. There are also not as many patterns in T20 games, as usually, the whole 20 overs are spent attacking. Whereas ODIs require defence, patience, tactical field settings and tactical batting in terms of when to up the run rate. In an ODI series usually the offend or higher ranked team will come out on top. However, in T20 matches this is much more unpredictable, and countries such as Afghanistan and the Netherlands have had success in T20 format, despite the last mentioned not universe in the 2017 ICC ODI rankings (ICC 2017).1.4 D/L MethodOne issue which has always been present in cricket is that bad weather conditions, especially rain, will often affect games, especia lly in limited overs cricket. For the first 30 minutes of delay there are no overs lost, then every 5 minutes after this there is 1 over lost per side. For an ODI to be completed there must be at least 20 overs per side played. There is usually no reserve day for a game that ends as a no result, due to tight scheduling. To minimalise the impact of weather factors that cannot be controlled, the Duckworth-Lewis (D/L) method is use to calculate the target scored for the team batting second where the rain has break off the game. It is a mathematical formulation that takes in to consideration how many overs and wickets keep so the game has a higher chance of ending in a result. The fundamental basis of the Duckworth/Lewis (D/L) method is that we do not make better the target by the proportion of overs lost, but by the proportion of the total run-scoring resources lost. (Duckworth 2001)There have been many previous attempts at creating a system to set a total so that games can be compl eted, including the add up run rate (ARR) method and the most productive overs (MPO) method. The modal(a) run rate method was used to set a total, and it did this by taking the modal(a) number of runs scored per over x the reduced innings. The problem with ARR is that it is too simplistic, and gave an unfair advantage to the team batting second if there was rain. The most productive overs method was introduced by the Australians and it set the target to chase by reducing the total based on the number of runs scored in the most productive overs. However, this did not take in to account when the overs were lost and could result in a very unfair target. (Duckworth and Lewis 2012)As an aside, a way to solve the problems of weather affected matches could be coming in the form of indoor cricket. The first indoor match to be played was an ODI between Australia and South Africa on the 16th August 2000 (Ramaraj 2013). However, this has not caught on approximately the world despite the p romise of a full days play. Jonty Rhodes (Grunill and Lillywhite 2005), a South Africa player in the game, said there were problems to overcome, namely the fact that players were looking up at the lights even when the ball was at head height as the lighting was not on pylons.1.5 Initial Variables gentle the TossThe coin toss is contested between the home and away captain 30 minutes prior to the first ball being bowled. The captains will go out onto the pitch and before contesting the toss they will assess the conditions to help them make their choice of batting or bowling first. about of the conditions they consider are also variables I have looked at in this study. In the 17th century it is believed that the winning captain also got to choose which pitch was used for the game, a job that is now left to the umpires. surmisal 1 Winning the toss will importantly make up the chance of winning an ODI. Batting or bowling firstUpon winning the toss, the captain is left with the strateg ic decision between batting first or second. Some people believe that a team should bat first and produce a psychological hurdle for the second team to overcome. Other people believe that there is an advantage in batting second as the score required has already been produced. (de Silva and Swartz, 1998). Some people also believe that it is best to look at several factors before making the choice of batting or bowling first.Hypothesis 2 There will be no significant increase in the chance of winning an ODI by always batting or bowling first. Home or AwayHome team advantage is believed to be a significant factor in most, if not all sports. In a 2008 study Measurement and Interpretation of Home Advantage, Stefani says that the biggest factors believed to stretch out to home team advantage are travel fatigue, home team spectator support and home team familiarity. In ODI cricket, travel fatigue should not be too much of a factor as teams will usually arrive at the opposition country a w eek or 2 before the series. Morley and Thomas (2005) find that attendance figures at English cricket matches do not give any significant advantage to the home team. They do however state that in certain venues this may not be the case. This leaves us with home team familiarity, and I believe this factor weighs heavily in the outcome of ODI matches.The average score at a ground in England can be very different from a ground in another continent. For example, the average run rate in ODIs at the Kia Oval in London, unite Kingdom is 4.84 and the average run rate in Lahore, Pakistan is 5.24. (howstat, 2017). Both movement have been hosting ODIs since the 1970s. This means that teams must change their mindset about what is a good 1st innings total when they play away from home. Weather conditions and cricket pitches also vary in different countries and continents. There are 9 official test teams in the ICC rankings and each of these countries has a usual shell of pitch.The term dead pi tch is used to describe pitches that are savorless and offer little help for bowlers. Dead pitches are the most common wickets that are prepared these days. the most common pitch role in ODIs. (cricketequipmentusa, 2017). These pitches are often found in Australia, South Africa and the westside Indies. English pitches are usually encouraging for fast bowlers pitches are often referred to as green tops. These pitches are also found in naked Zealand and sometimes South Africa, they have a thin layer of cola which helps to produce swing and seam. Overcast and windy conditions are often present in England, which can correspondingly assist the ball to swing. Pitches on the subcontinent are often the opposite, where wickets are dry and dusty. The subcontinent is a term used to describe a large part of Asia, and includes the 4 big cricketing nations India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The lack of rain in the subcontinent means no green on the pitches and the dryness creates a l ot of spin and uneven bounce. This is undoubtedly the reason why subcontinent teams have produced some of the best spin bowlers and why teams like England seem to make out when playing away there.Hypothesis 3 England perform significantly better at home than anywhere else.Hypothesis 4 England perform significantly worse in the subcontinent than anywhere else.The first section of my study will test the variables mentioned above using a three-way ANOVA table. I test for statistical significance (