The opportunity for sports has changed over the years with introducing analytics, I remember self-watching INDIA and SRI LANKA 2011 Cricket World Cup Finals, without shifting my position from the sofa.

Sports analytics is quickly becoming mainstream in every game, with the help of media and various tools used in sports its help full for teams to analyze the player performance and many more.

We can now answer questions such as:

• What are the chances of a team winning a match while they are playing in a particular venue?
• What is the strike rate of a batsman against a particular bowler?
• Which batsman is best among the team in the Power play?

And so on. Honestly, there is no limit in sports analytics or in cricket analytics.

We will look at sports analytics and types of sports analytics, why it’s important in the field of cricket.

What is Sports Analytics?

It is the analysis of sports data, including components of sports such as player’s performance, and extracting insights from sports data that are useful.

Sports analytics can be divided into TWO categories:

• Descriptive Sports Analytics
• Predictive Sports Analytics

Descriptive Sports Analytics:

It is all about summarizing the Historical sports data in the form of numbers, tables and charts. The aim behind these sports analytics plays a crucial role in team decision-making and team tactics.

Example: We can analyze how frequently a bowler takes the wicket of a particular batsman or what is the average runs scored by a batsman against a particular bowler.

Also, in cricket to analyze a team’s probability of winning that particular match while batting first or second can be derived, so that this will help the captain to make a decision in toss.

Predictive Sports Analytics:

It is about making predictions with the help of historical sports data, such as predicting the number of runs a batsman score against the opponent team in a match. This will help the team management and the captain to select the right players against the opponent team for every match.

Importance of Sports Analytics:

Sports analytics is a true game – changer for any team, using analytics in sports we make major impact in the decision-making process of a team and change the future of a franchise or club in just one match by helping them in making the right decision.

Cricket With Sports Analytics:

Using sports analytics in cricket, we can analyze the strength of a player and the weakness of player. This helps both the opponent and the player to better understand their strength and weakness and improve their game. Sports analytics is a vast subject where the data is just not the historical data collected from the previous match or game, it is more of an ongoing process where few tools are used to track each and every movement of the player’s motion, the player’s agility and endurance in a match, tacking the motion of the ball when the ball is bowled, the batting style and position of the player even how the player holds the bat, the swinging speed of the bat, the ball speed, even things like at which part of the bat made a contact with the ball. All these data set are gathered with various new tools and technologies where most of the data gathered are by the team management itself and other are been gathered from a third party for a premium paid, for example, StanceBeam is a sticker company that provides stickers to the bat, where these stickers contain a tracking mechanics which is used to understand the batsman batting style and the area of contact of the bat with the ball each time when the batsman faces a ball.

Sports analytics is the place where people who enjoy the game and have an interest in the field of sports can start working and make a career. Anyone with an interest in learning can start working on and build a career, there are various IPL teams that want a good analyst, and other cricket analytics industries like Cricket.com, Crivitz, Fan code and even fantasy apps such as Dream11, MPL, etc. are looking for an analyst. So, start learning about sports analytics now and make a bright career. You can start with a workshop offered by madaboutsports.com on cricket analytics, it is a pretty good workshop where they teach you how to use python in cricket analytics and various opportunities available in the field of sports analytics.                                         

R. Dharshan
I MBA, DSCE