What is Cricmetric?

The main question that we at Cricmetric are trying to answer is: what is the exact value of a player, given his performance in a match or over several matches in a tournament? Or, how do we evaluate the two main dimensions of a player contribution, batting and bowling, in a single currency?

Traditionally, Cricket statistics has looked at the basic statistics such as runs scored, batting average and batting strike for evaluating batsmen, and wickets taken, economy rate and bowling average for evaluating bowlers. However, none of these statistics take into account the context of the player performance. For example, a half-century scored in the chase of a 250+ target is intuitively more valuable than a century scored in the pursuit of a score of 150. Or a wicket taken when defending a score of 200 is a bigger contribution than taking a five wicket haul after the chasing team was already tottering at 150/5 in the pursuit of a 300+ score.

To overcome these drawbacks with the existing Cricket statistics, we are developing mathematical models that will evaluate player performances in the context of the match. The main tool behind our mathematical models is the Win Probability statistic (for more details, see the Glossary page). The player performances are then measured in terms of Win Probability Added (WPA) – which is a statistic that measures the contribution of the player towards the win of the respective team.

For now, you can follow the win probability of IPL 2011 matches live on our website. Clicking on the graph on the scoreboard page will take you to the page which will display live WPA for the players in the game. We will continue to add many more cool statistics in the coming days, so stay tuned!

We hope you will enjoy our work at Cricmetric, and if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to get in touch with us.