World Cup 2011: an alternate preview

The tenth edition of the World Cup is not far away. In my last article I looked at the previous 9 World Cups from an alternate analysis point of view. In this article I will look at the ensuing World Cup, similarly from an analytical point of view.

For this article I have used some of the results of the proprietary work on recent form and match simulation I have done for a company which has a web presence exclusively for Cricket. As such I will not be presenting any detailed tables but refer to the conclusions extracted from those. I request readers to kindly bear with me. There are contractual restrictions to be observed.

The cornerstone of this analysis is the Team Strength index (TSI) of the participating teams. This index has been extracted using a complex process which involves the following.

- An estimated Final XI.
- The career figures of selected players.
- The recent form of players, bowling and batting.

The base TSI is determined using the following data.

- Career Runs per innings, after excluding single-digit not outs.
- Career Strike rate.
- Career Bowling strike rate- Balls per wicket.
- Career bowling accuracy - Runs per over.
- Recent Form Runs per innings, after excluding single-digit not outs.
- Recent Form Strike rate.
- Recent Form Bowling strike rate- Balls per wicket.
- Recent Form bowling accuracy - Runs per over.

The teams have been selected by me based on the assumption that ALL the players would be available and would be injury-free. Key players such as Tendulkar, Sehwag, Gambhir, Ponting, Collingwood, Bresnan, Kallis, Vettori and a few others have injury concerns. If these players do not play, the numbers would change as also the predictions. Mike Hussey and Eoin Morgan are already out. The teams concerned have already gone down in strength.

The recent form encompasses the last 10 innings played or last 10 spells bowled, provided these have been played on or after 1 January 2009. Most players have done this during 2010 itself. However someone like Tendulkar has played 2 innings in 2011 and 2 in 2010 and I had to go back one more year. 2009 performances are weighted slightly lower. Runs per Innings makes more sense than Batting average especially since recent form has to be considered. 3 not outs out of 10 distorts the recent form a lot. The weight for recent form numbers as against career numbers is decided based on the number of career matches played. The career figures have the highest weight of 75% if the player has played more than 100 matches. The recent form numbers become more significant if the player has played fewer matches.

After the base TSI is determined it is further adjusted based on the following three factors.

- The recent form of the teams - results, margins, venues et al.
- The venue of the matches (to decide on home/familiarity measures).
- The team performances in the two recent World Cups (2003 and 2007). This will enable us to assign due weight to the manner in which big-matches and big-stage have been handled. Going back beyond 2003 is not right since most of those players would have retired.

Recent form of teams: The recent form of teams considers the last 20 matches played by the team, provided these have been played on or after 1 January 2009. Most teams have done this during 2010 itself. The results are analyzed from results (wins/ties/losses) point of view and the match venue (home/neutral/away) point of view. In addition the margins of wins is incorporated. Finally, unlike the batsmen/bowler recent form calculations, the team numbers are determined based on the recent matches only. Needless to say, the West Indian successes of the 1970s should have no bearing on the chances of today's West Indies. The form related changes work out to around 3% on either side of 100.

Match venue factor: India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have been assigned a 2.5% benefit value for playing at home. Pakistan has a 1.25% benefit for playing in familiar sub-continent conditions.

Recent World Cup form: Upto 2% is allotted for this factor. A simple one based on the performances of teams in the recent two World Cups. Australia gets 2% (2 wins), Sri Lanka gets 0.75% (One final and one semi-final), India gets 0.50% (one final), New Zealand gets 0.35% (one semi-final and one super-six) and so on.

These numbers might seem arbitrary. However these have been arrived at after lot of trial runs. Moreover the benefit cannot be made greater than these since these numbers are used for simulation which is very sensitive to these numbers.

The recent form tables are listed below. It should be noted that the actual match team strength of India in its inaugural match against Bangladesh will be slightly lower since they would be playing "away" and Bangladesh would be playing at "home". Similarly actual match team strength of Sri Lanka in its match against New Zealand will be very slightly lower since both of them would be playing at "neutral" venue.

Team         BtIdx BwIdx TmIdx LocAdj RF_Adj Wc_Adj BtIdx BwIdx TmIdx

Not so surprising that India leads the team strength table, albeit by a hairsbreadth, closely followed by Sri Lanka, South Africa and Australia. India has the best batting lineup amongst all, and good bowling strength. Sri Lanka has the best bowling credentials, not matched by the batting. South Africa is placed high in both areas. Australia is also similarly placed. Their top quality pace bowling makes up for their average spin bowling. England, weakened by the loss of a key player and their indifferent form and Pakistan, with the loss of two key bowlers and their inability to play at home, are in the middle. Bangladesh, New Zealand and West Indies are in the third group. Ireland is very good, but is probably out of its league. Zimbabwe has an excellent spin attack but their batting is pathetic. Netherlands has one truly world class player. Canada, with an almost wholly expatriate team, are here to fill up the numbers.

The recent form of South Africa, Australia and Sri Lanka has been excellent. India and Pakistan have kept their heads above water. England's form was the best until recently. Unfortunately the Australian disaster reversed this. The other way around for Australia. The recent form of West Indies and New Zealand has been awful.

Now to the groups.

Team         BtIdx BwIdx TmIdx LocAdj RF_Adj Wc_Adj BtIdx BwIdx TmIdx

Group B is quite difficult to predict and is fraught with possibilities. The average team strength is 48.68, around 7-8% higher than the other group. However the dark horse is Bangladesh. They have a team strength which is understandably and justifiably higher than West Indies. They are the only team which would be playing all their matches at home. India and Sri Lanka play one match away. So there is a very good chance (I would put it as high as 50%) of Bangladesh winning three matches. That should put them in with a great chance of qualifying. So there is a good chance that one of the top four teams would miss out. That seems likely to be West Indies. Also note that Ireland are also quite strong. So let us say India, South Africa, England and Bangladesh, the order of the top three uncertain.

What happens afterwards is almost a lottery. The team which has three great days would win the cup, that is all. The two teams which have very little chance of having three great days are Bangladesh and New Zealand and should be ruled out. Out of the other six, England and Pakistan are likely to have two great days, but probably not three. So this leaves us with the four teams, India, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Australia. It could be any one of these four.

I can hear some readers saying that this is what everyone and their neighbour's cat is saying. However my statement is based on the fact that I have done complete simulation of the World Cup a few thousands of times. But as I have already mentioned, that is proprietary information for my client. Hence I am not able to divulge that information, until it is published. I can only say that these four teams are closely bunched together and, as a group, have around 80-85% chance of winning the World Cup. Pakistan and England follow next. The readers can draw their own inferences. The final simulation results show a very high degree of correlation with the Team strength values.

To view/down-load the list of selected players for each team, please click/right-click here.

Finally a request to the readers.

This is a World Cup played between 14 teams and 210 players. About half of these players would have fond expectations of winning and reaping the rich rewards. They would like to win the World Cup for themselves and their countries. It is quite unlikely that they do it for some other player in their team, however great the player might be. So let us stay out of this "win for Jayawardene" or "win for Tendulkar" or "win for Kallis" etc. Let your comments be centred around the teams not individuals. In this analysis, as in real life, the 11 players bring with them their performance-related numbers and contribute to the Team Strength. Then it is the team which performs together.