Soon IPL 2024 would draw to a close – this season has been extremely entertaining. IPL provides opportunities to many youngsters
to brush shoulders with International stars – whether that is good or bad is
debatable. A similar situation prevailed
in mid 1970s / 1980s when there were so many stars from West Indies and other lands playing in
English counties. Good experience, yet
England kept losing badly to WI – and now they are banking on AI – yes Artificial
intelligence on a costly business model on ‘what it takes to win !’
Remember there used to be conditioning camps just prior to a
tour and there would be some discussions in leading newspapers about probables!
– there were times when Bharat Reddy was spoken high as a replacement for
Farokh Engineer ! – for Australia tour 1980 – in the Deodhar trophy, perhaps a
brilliant innings by Thirumalai Echambadi Srinivasan clinched him a position
when most expected Krish Srikkanth to be selected. Before that all important tour to Pakistan in
1978 under Bishan Bedi, the fast bowling
vacancy was discussed as between Abid Ali, Jyoti Prasad and Barun Burman but a
lad caught selectors’ attention in the camp and that changed the destiny of pace
in India – Kapil Dev !
Stumbled on a scorecard of a Duleep trophy match between South Zone
and North Zone in Oct 1977 – the scorecard makes an awesome read of the star
value (but perhaps not all of them were Stars at that time)
The
match was played at Bangalore. North had
a strong contingent with Test players : Chetan Chauhan, Mohinder Amarnath,
Surinder Amarnath, Madan lal& Bishan Bedi; those who later played for India
were : Yashpal Sharma, Rakesh Shukla and
mercurial Kapil Dev - Hari Gidwani,
Vedraj Chauhan (wk) & Rajinder Goel completed the list.
For
South – it was : Abid Ali, Gundappa
Viswanath, Brijesh Patel, Syed Kirmani, Srinivasan Venkatraghavan, Erapalli
Prasanna and Bhagwat Chandrasekhar; TE
Srinivasan& B Narasimha Rao went on to represent the Nation; others were
the tall leftie V Sivaramakrishnan,
Jyothi Prasad
To put it simply, one had to rise through the ranks ie., play
league, perform well in Ranji, get a chance for the Zone (Duleep / Deodhar) and
if lucky, Irani Cup and .. .. hope to be in with a chance for the National
team. Now the process of selection of
England’s squad for next year’s Ashes began this week, using the ECB’s
ground-breaking £500,000-a-year camera technology.
Headed by performance analysis lead Stafford Murray, the boffins
based at Loughborough will use their vast pool of data, in conjunction with
expert input from the likes of England coach Brendon McCullum and captain Ben
Stokes, to produce a photofit of what a winning Test team in Australian
conditions looks like.They will then find the players from within the English
game whose individual characteristics most closely replicate the required
mould. So, for example, if the boffins
suggest England require a bowler taller than six and a half foot, another able
to maintain 87-mile-per-hour for the entire day and a left-armer consistently
swinging the ball more than X degrees to create the most potent attack for
their 2025-26 tour, they will hone in on the best fits from the county game
rather than pore through the numbers of those excelling in the here and now.
‘It’s
a massive project we’ve just started, on what it will take to win the Ashes,’
Murray said, explaining that while data based, it inevitably incorporates the
knowledge of coaches and players past and present.The ECB's performance team
are currently in the process of building a "What It Takes To Win"
model for the 2025-26 tour to Australia. Its construction will be informed by
the knowledge of coaches and players past and present, along with data accrued
from previous visits. Once deemed robust enough, it will refine decisions
around talent ID and provide selectors all the information required to select a
squad capable of a first win Down Under since 2010-11. The
aim, ultimately, is to "bring data to life".
Thanks
to the ECB's new iHawk technology, collecting that data has never been easier
or more qualitative. Through cameras worn by umpires, each delivery is tracked
to provide information such as seam movement, release height, pace and swing.
An overlay highlighting the path of the ball is then produced, complete with
the above information at the top left of the screen. A soft launch in 2023 saw
200 matches and over 50,000 balls logged from more than 250 bowlers. Every
domestic men's and women's match will be covered for the first time this
season.
A
longer-term project is currently in the works to determine the precise
difference in behaviour between the Dukes and Kookaburra balls from gleanings
during its use in the first two rounds of the County Championship, supplemented
by findings when it returns in July and August.With the start of England men's
Test summer two months away, all this will be fed to the selection committee
made up of captain Ben Stokes, head coach Brendon McCullum, managing director
Rob Key and national selector Luke Wright. Whether for the series against West
Indies or Sri Lanka, a scientific punt could be in the offing.
"If
we're brave, which I know we will be, we'll be selecting in series before the
Ashes with the Ashes in mind," says Murray, referencing the fact players
best equipped to perform in all conditions will be considered. "It's a
blend and it's an ongoing, iterative process, working towards a long-term goal.
It's a 'performance backwards' approach."Primarily a business model,
"performance backwards" is as it sounds; identifying a future goal
and working out the route to that point in reverse. England employed it for the
recent tour of India, which led to the selection Shoaib Bashir. The Somerset
offspinner took 17 wickets across three Tests, having arrived with a
first-class average of 67.00 from just six matches.
"Shoaib
is a really good example [of this]," explains Hannah Jowitt, the lead on
the iHawk project as well as analyst and project specialist for the ECB's
pathway and disability programmes. After Stokes spotted Bashir bowling to
Alastair Cook on a social media post by the County Championship account, the
gears started turning."One step before that, we analysed what was needed
in India. Release height in India was really important. We got data from county
cricket. That, combined with scouts' insights, led to his selection for the UAE
[Lions] camp. Coaches and selectors had physical eyes on him there. We got more
iHawk data on him, more video [fed directly by Murray to a WhatsApp group
featuring Key, McCullum, Stokes and Wright], which led to his selection for
playing in India."
Essentially,
iHawk is HawkEye "lite". The full bells and whistles, which require
between four and six cameras, are exclusive to international cricket due to,
among other factors, cost.
Technology will scientifically prove that a red cherry hurled at
150 kmph offers less than half of a second for batsman to decide, yet you find
batters hitting it over square, over keeper, straight down or over extra cover for
a six too!! Despite all the aura and
Science, there are games where individual raw talents can succeed irrespective
of data, average, likelihood, analysis, coaching and more. Whether technology can ever succeed raw innate talent will be
put to test again and again.
17.5.2024.
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