PCB Appoint Five Mentors - Wouldn't They Be Better Investing in a Top Level Analytics Department Instead?
Yesterday an article on Cricinfo caught my eye - you can read it here.
Misbah Ul-Haq, Sarfaraz Ahmed, Saqlain Mushtaq, Waqar Younis and Shoaib Malik have been appointed PCB ‘Mentors’.
A few quotes here from the article:-
“The mentor roles have come under scrutiny not least for the salaries involved. Each of the five is believed to be on three-year contracts, earning in the range of PKR 5 million (approx. USD 18,000) per month. Those salaries have raised eyebrows because they are higher than what is paid to all but the most elite Pakistani cricketers - the category A players, Babar Azam, Shaheen Shah Afridi and Mohammad Rizwan, in the central contracts pool.”
“For perspective, just the mentor salaries will total about half the PCB's entire broadcast deal for bilateral international cricket at home over the next 30 months. From August 2024 to December 2026, the PCB's broadcast deal is worth between USD 6 to 6.5 million. Salaries for the five mentors in that time will amount to approximately USD 2.7 million.”
“The roles are separate from coaching - each side will have a separate yet-to-be-announced coaching set-up - and do not require coaching qualifications. Three of the five mentors have served as Pakistan's head coach in the recent past and the PCB has not made public what metrics the mentors will be evaluated by, or why they believe the outlay will offer a return on investment.”
Considering this, around $2.7m will be spent collectively over the duration of the contracts for the mentors, with there being little clarity offered on accountability. Plus, mentors is often a vague term in cricket - I’m still not sure what they do, or are supposed to do.
This is, on the surface, a high cost investment from the PCB which is far from guaranteed to yield any dividends. Instead of the $2.7 on these five mentors, they could spend 20% ($540,000) on establishing the best analytical department in international cricket and save over $2m in the process - a move which would be highly likely to have a higher expected win percentage than hiring these mentors.
On a related subject, I’m currently reading Ian Graham’s book ‘How to win the Premier League’ which is fascinating - more chat about that book in future posts - but the similarities between his early experiences in football around 15-20 years ago, and those which I see in cricket now are shockingly identical.
The financial inefficiency of cricket teams (whether they are Pakistan, in the IPL, in county cricket or anywhere else) is quite something. These teams spend huge sums of money on things which have little or no discernible increase in their expected performance level, but are far less willing to spend decent money on analytics which would help with their recruitment, selection and strategy.
Quite incredibly, in the year 2024, there is still plenty of scope for competitive advantages in cricket if teams are willing to think outside the box.
Anyone interested in discussing how I can help their team with strategic management and data-driven analysis can get in touch at sportsanalyticsadvantage@gmail.com.