Player selection in cricket based on similarity of playing conditions

Abstract

Cricket is the most popular game in the developing countries of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka etc) is quickly becoming one of the most widely used form of entertainment in the developing countries of South Asia. As sports are one of the most influential driving forces of a society, use of analytic is perceived to be conducive for creating a more analysis driven society, which is a necessity for developing countries with low rate of literacy. That is how widespread use of technology and analysis in cricket can drive a technological spark in the South Asian developing countries. Cricket is an eleven-member team sport, where the team selection has traditionally been done based on popular reputation of the player and intuition of the management. However, with the recent advent of T20 cricket, which is a shorter version of the game as opposed to the traditional 5-day longer version, the use of data analysis and prediction tools is becoming widespread. The analysis tools mostly analyze a player's skills and past records for team selection. However, unlike other sports, the playing conditions are vital in cricket as the conditions are vastly different from ground to ground. This work takes a novel approach of player selection as we consider the ground characteristics in case of choosing one player over another, where none of the players have prior experience of playing on that ground.