Quantification of Missed Chances in Cricket

Abstract

Cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world. Starting from England it has spread over almost all the countries in the world. The game has three aspects namely batting, bowling and fielding. Team having goodbatsman and bowers has an advantage over their opponent but in recent times with the development of Twenty-20 cricket the aspect of good fielding has increased. In many occasion it is seen that the team won matches very closely, thus saving two or three runs in filed or taking a good catch can turn the whole match towards the fielding team. On the other hand dropping catches, run-out or any other fielding mistakes in the field may cause the game. Thus, in recent past the importance of fielding has increased. On this backdrop the present study tries to quantify the value of missed chances in a game of cricket. Since all the batsman doesn’t have the same level of efficiency thus dropping a catch of top order batsman is different from dropping a catch of lower order batsman. Thus, in this study taking all those factors which is going to effect in the quantification of missed chances a metric is developed for finding the value of missed chances. This metric is then used in ICC Men’s Twenty-20 World Cup-2021 for the computation of value of missed chances. From this we find that D.Mitchell of New Zealand missed opportunity in semifinal of this tournament has highest value of missed chances which has also cost the match for the fielding team. Also the team which has lowest value of missed chances overall in the tournament is South Africa. Thus, it is concluded that South Africa is the best team in the tournament compared to other teams with regard to fielding.