A look back at 2022

And moving forward in 2023...

I get quite a lot of messages asking me about the journey to becoming an analyst working with teams so this month I plan on posting a few articles looking at this type of topic. First up, I thought it might be interesting to look back on the year just gone, which illustrates quite how volatile professional sport can be, and how that volatility can influence a career - even for someone as an analyst or part of a management group who isn’t actively participating on the pitch.

Just before the start of 2022, I was engaged to work as an Auction Consultant for Punjab Kings, which was a fantastic project. Essentially, it was six weeks of basically full-time planning for the IPL Mega Auction on 12th/13th February.

Walking into the auction room in Bangalore, I felt no nerves. I genuinely felt that if any team had prepared better than we had, then good luck to them because they must have done an incredible job. My thoughts were confirmed when I saw a team on a nearby table do some last minute searching of players on Cricinfo!

Over the six weeks, I’d built an IPL specific run production model which was very useful to me to assess the vast player pool - with such a vast player pool, it’s critical to be able to draw a line through a number of players to get a workable shortlist of options. This was also a derivative of the model which I had created previously for the T10 draft towards the end of 2021 when I was working at Bangla Tigers, but I’ll save the plentiful stories from that tournament for a rainy day.

Essentially, for any league in any country, I can create a detailed run production model for every single batter and bowler in the world, and that service is available for T20 teams worldwide. Any teams interested can contact me at sportsanalyticsadvantage@gmail.com.

Of course, this was just one part of the IPL auction planning but I felt that we ended the auction in fantastic shape. We had assembled a squad which had a clear, high intent identity which would play positive cricket, be good to watch and which possessed players who fit the structure of winning teams.

A few fine margins later - lots of lost tosses, two Tewatia sixes in the last two balls to name just several examples - Punjab fell one win short of qualification and pretty much the entire coaching and management staff lost their jobs. As I was saying earlier, volatility of professional sport can have a profound effect on careers. It’s a real shame because I remain convinced that the squad we assembled had a great chance of both current and future success, and with one or two additions, would have been one of the favourites for the 2023 tournament. I just hope for all the wonderful Punjab Kings fans who have contacted me that the new management continue the team’s 2022 identity.

After moving on from Punjab Kings, I am now available for any IPL team interested in my services, or any media work.

Following February’s IPL auction, it was back to domestic business with the Hundred Draft taking place at the start of April. I’ve worked on every draft from the original 2019 pre-Covid draft for Birmingham Phoenix and in a few months time, I’ll have worked for the team for four years despite the tournament having only had two editions so far, and hopefully for a long time to come. Despite the opinion of some critics of the tournament, I have seen with my own eyes how many young people have been drawn to cricket due to The Hundred, finding new sporting heroes such as Moeen Ali and Liam Livingstone.

Given Phoenix’s strong 2021 season, we only made a few adjustments to our squad in the draft, although our two higher priced pace bowling options were subsequently ruled out with injury. Again, this illustrates the issues with which professional sports teams sometimes have to deal with and what people often forget when judging them - throw in Adam Milne’s late injury, and Liam Livingstone’s in-tournament injury too, and it felt like we were pretty unlucky last season.

Having lost the 2021 final after topping the group, and coming 4th despite winning 5/8 matches in 2022, there’s a lot of unfinished business at Phoenix. I actually feel we achieved at least as much, if not more with the resources we had in 2022 compared to 2021, despite the finishing positions, and hopefully there’s a title just around the corner. I certainly left the tournament feeling I was much better equipped to work with upskilling and creating plans for existing players as opposed to being previously more focused with recruitment, and that was a process I really enjoyed.

Finally, the end of the 2022 county season saw my departure as a Recruitment & Strategy Analyst at Leicestershire to take up a new role as Senior Data Analyst at Kent.

The decision to leave Leicestershire was a tough one given how much I enjoyed working with Paul Nixon in particular. He’s an absolute legend, we had so many heated but healthy debates and challenges but always with the best interests of the team at heart. I’d like to think that we will team up again in an overseas league in the not too distant future. There’s so many good people at the club, and in white ball in particular I think success isn’t far away as long as key players stay at the club. Red ball is more of a struggle, with there being a huge correlation between budget and finishing position, but there’s some great young talent coming through at the club who can make a big impression in the longer format.

Ultimately though, it was getting towards the end of the season and I hadn’t been offered a new deal, and I felt that the project was moving slightly away from the one which I had envisaged. So when the prospect of a new role at Kent came up, I jumped at the opportunity. It’s my home county, my parents still live there and I also went to University in Canterbury too so I know the city well - it’s a great fit for me personally.

With Kent having won two white ball tournaments in the last two years, and being in Division One in red ball cricket, continued improvement offers a real challenge but one I’m inspired to thrive at. Having recently built a number of red ball models to assess domestic players and identify talent, the opportunity to work more intensively in red ball cricket is something which I’m very excited about in particular. The first few months have been fantastic, and I’m buzzing that we’ve picked up Kane Richardson as an overseas pacer for the T20 Blast having already worked with him at Phoenix last summer and knowing what he can offer us.

While my domestic commitments (mainly April - September) are pretty hectic, I still remain available for the right project overseas during the English winter. Any interested teams should contact me at sportsanalyticsadvantage@gmail.com.