With the start of the world’s premier domestic T20 competition on our doorstep, I am once again full of optimism about providing analytically based Fantasy team selections for the entirety of this year’s IPL. Of course I had the same optimism at the start of the last BBL campaign and my predictions lasted a grand total of one match. It was encouraging though that in that match the team placed 63rd out of 500 entries, which should be considered a successful debut! Was it just luck? The only way to be certain is to make a concerted effort to provide team selections for as many matches as possible during IPL IX.
You might recall that the approach used last year revolved around the Dream11 fantasy cricket point system. Each player’s expected points were calculated based on their actual performances over the preceding twelve months. This was then regressed against their actual performances to arrive at separate equations for bowlers, batsmen and all-rounders to determine the make up of the Dream11 fantasy team.
In the spirit of progress and because this is a fresh competition and despite my self-proclaimed “successful” debut last year, this year a different methodology is being used.
The basis of Fantasy Team selection this year will be Contribution Scores. Refer to the bottom of this article for a detailed explanation of how Contribution Scores are derived. While you will note that Contribution Scores are not directly aligned with the points scoring systems in Fantasy Cricket, on average it should be expected that the high Contribution Scores should be associated with the best batting and bowling performances. Because Contribution Scores are proving to be very relevant in terms of predicting match winners, squad selection and matching bowlers against batsman, I thought it might also be interesting to test their relevance in Fantasy Team selection.
So the way it works is like this.
Step 1: Nominate the starting XIs will be for each team. The approach taken is to select the best team available – best defined as those players with the highest Contribution Scores who are not injured – while providing as much diversity in terms of bowling options as possible, without unduly sacrificing on Contribution Scores.
Step 2: Calculate the historical balls faced per match and balls bowled per match for all players, and assume those levels of participation continue in the upcoming match. These values are pro-rated so that total balls faced and total balls bowled are 120 per team
Step 3: Allocate the balls bowled by each bowler to each batsman according to the average number of balls faced by each batsman. For example, suppose Batsman A averages facing 30 balls per innings. Then suppose Bowler A averages 4 overs per match bowls, which represents 20% of his team’s deliveries in a match. Then Batsman A will face on average 20% of his 30 deliveries from Bower A, i.e 6 deliveries. The process is followed for each player in each team.
Step 4: Calculate each players expected Contribution Score in the match. This takes into account how many balls each batsman is expected to face from each bowler, how many balls each bowler will bowl to each batsman and how each player historically performs against each type of bowler or batsman.
Step 5: Rank the players from highest to lowest Contribution Scores and, subject to the Fantasy league restrictions on player selection, select the Fantasy team comprising the highest overall Contribution Scores.
There is another change I will try to follow this year. Instead of the selected team only playing in Dream11, the team will be entered in five different fantasy cricket competitions:
- Dream 11
- Fanspole
- Fandromeda
- CricketInc
- Cricbattle
As each competition has different approaches to scoring, it may end up that the Fantasy Team is consistently more successful in one competition compared to others. Then the conclusion might (selfishly) be that that completion is the most realistic!!
Anyway, enough of the babble. Below are my selections for Match 1 of the IPL featuring the Mumbai Indians against the rising Pune Supergiants, with absolutely no responsibility taken if you put your life savings on them! I hope to share the results after the game. You will note that there are some differences in the teams for the different fantasy leagues. This is due to the different rules associated with team selection, such as how many foreign players, how many players from any one team, minimum number of bowlers, budget limitation on player selection etc.
Best of luck with your teams!
Dream 11 Fantasy Team
Cricketinc Fantasy Team
Fandromeda
Fanspole
Cricbattle
Contribution Score Explanation
There are relatively few alternative approaches to assessing player performance in T20 cricket other than the traditional average and strike rate metrics. However these metrics alone do not capture one of the more critical aspects of player performance, which is the state of the match at which a player makes his or her contribution. This is particularly important in T20 cricket. Take the following example.
Suppose a batsman scores 50 runs off 50 balls. While this is a reasonable contribution in any form of cricket, it would generally be considered slightly below average in T20 cricket given that the average strike rate is closer to 130 runs per 100 balls faced. Now take two different game situations in which this score might be made:
- An opening batsman in a team batting first scores 50 off 50 balls and is the first wicket to fall, in the 18th over with the score at 115
- An opening batsman finds his team at 20-6 chasing 80 for victory. He scores 50 off 50 balls and although he is dismissed in the last over, his team hangs on for a 2 wicket win
Which inning is more important for the team? Clearly the second innings was more important and should be rated higher than the first. Most available metrics in cricket will not recognize the difference in value of these two innings. The Contribution Score (CS) however identifies every match state in every game, and assesses the players’ performance accordingly. As a result, over the course of an inning, a match, a series, a year or a career, we can use Contribution Scores to assess how a well a player has performed given the situations he or she has been in.
CSs are easy to interpret as they are measured in terms of runs. If a batsman’s CS for an innings is 0, it means that the player performed in line with average given the state of the match during which the inning was played. A CS of say +10 for an innings means the player contributed 10 more runs than expected given the state of the match, while a CS of -10 means they contributed ten runs less run than average given the state of the match. The same approach is applied for bowlers. A score of +1 for a batsman for a given delivery automatically means a score of -1 is given to the bowler of that delivery. As CS are measured on the same scale, a batting CS of +10 means exactly the same as a bowling CS of +10 in terms of the players contribution to the team’s performance.
For example a batsman who averages a CS of +10 effectively contributes +10 runs above average to the team performance per innings. If the average score for a team batting first in T20 cricket is 151, then this players contribution is to increase the team’s average total by +10 runs to 161. Similarly, a bowler who averages a CS of -5 runs a game effectively gives away 5 runs on average to the opposition per game. If the average score for a team batting first in T20 cricket is 151, then this players contribution is the increase the opposition team’s average total to 156.
Another benefit of CS being measured on the same scale is that a players batting CS can be added to his/her bowling CS to arrive at his/her overall contribution to a match. This is useful for assessing who was the most influential player in a match.
Any contribution score greater than zero should be interpreted as above average performance. The higher the CS, the more above average.