More on Sports

Its surprising that the sports and analytics phenomenon should get so much press coverage suddenly.

I saw an article in viewpoint , the journal of Marsh & McLennan which again talks about the Maths of sports.

Some of my previous posts on this topic are here - 1, 2 and 3

Analytically Sports... Continued!

FractalAnalytics seems to be a step ahead of me! Here is a news item that covered their prediction on the First Match of World Cup (Cricket), between West Indies and Pakistan. Lo and behold, 2 of the predicted scores match exactly! Nobody would have expected that granular a performance prediction to be correct 75% of the times (as per their claims).

Going back to some of my earlier posts on use of analytics in sports - at Diamond Analytics Blog and here itself, what Fractal has already managed to do is a proof of concept.

The factors that I don't see them looking at is the location/playground/weather/batting order/ bowling order/ etc., which do have a big impact on performances.

> Under overcast conditions, the chances of Indian batsmen holing out to the wicketkeeper goes up significantly.
>> The chances of genuine swing bowlers running through the side on grassy pitches is high
>> On flat tracks, against minnows, in subcontinent kinda pitches, batsman have a feast day

These are examples of hypotheses that can be tested using data.

It would be interesting to see how teams can use a model like this to decide team composition, play batting orders, etc.!

Houston Rockets using Analytics

Recently, I had posted my views regarding the use of analytics in sport (on the company blog here).

I just came across this additional piece of information today. Rockets using Daryl Morey and his analytical skills for the game.

It justifies my faith in the world of analytics and its universal applicability.