ESPNcricinfo and IIT Madras collaborate on data science tool that analyses the game of cricket

In an effort to analyse cricket statistics with data science, sports news website ESPNcricinfo in a partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras launched a tool called ‘Superstats,’on Wednesday. According to IIT Madras Superstats is a combination of stats metrics that use data science to give a context to every event in a game, for forecasting and to explore the idea of assessing luck .

The algorithms use forecasting methods that train on past data to reveal trends and patterns during different periods of play and adapt based on actual match data resulting in predictive models, according to IIT Madras.

Researchers from the institute and an IIT-M incubated company Gyan Data have worked with cricket experts from ESPNcricinfo to design the tool from the website's ball-by-ball database with over ten years of data and with the help of algorithms based on machine learning.

The algorithms process data and are able to quantify the impact of luck and analyze the real value of a player’s performance in the game in real time, said the institute. The work is being led by Raghunathan Rengaswamy, Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Mahesh Panchagnula, Professor, Department of Applied Mechanics of IIT Madras along with the ESPN team.

Speaking on the data analytics efforts behind the project, Raghunathan Rengaswamy said, “While there might be many interpretations for luck, these algorithms rationalize and consistently quantify luck events so that a whole tournament with matches that occurred in disparate circumstances could be compared in an ‘apples-to-apples’ fashion.” He further added, “The AI work at IIT Madras is targeted towards several verticals such as fintech, manufacturing, smart city, biological systems engineering, and healthcare. Through this project, we have now forayed into sports analytics as well.”

Sambit Bal, Editor-in-chief, ESPNcricinfo and ESPN South Asia, said, “The development of these new metrics filled a long-felt gap in evaluating cricket performances…We have combined big data, cricket intelligence, and also data science to produce a set of numbers that will help fans understand and appreciate the game better.”