The future of data in cricket

Where are the niche areas?

I get a lot of messages from people looking to get into cricket data/analytics, with most wanting to work with teams. I do try and answer them as honestly as possible based on my personal experiences, which isn’t necessarily as much of an encouraging answer as perhaps many of those messaging me will have hoped for.

The reason for this is because it depends what you want to achieve. If you want to get a job with, say, a county in England, then it’s not impossible. You can do a degree, maybe do some low-paid interning or come through some pathway or have training, and then hope to get a first-team analyst job somewhere. However, by that point you are probably in quite a bit of debt due to the degree, in a job which doesn’t pay that much and with questionable scope to move up the hierarchy of a club.

At this point you’ll probably be a competent ‘coder’ but not necessarily a great deal more. A lot of analysts are also expected to help in training as well doing stuff such as mitting - my personal belief is that they should be encouraged to spend their time doing what they should be best at - analysis.

The concept of ‘coding’ is not quite as grandiose as it sounds - instead of a vision of programming a complicated model it’s actually just logging ball by ball data. Who the bowler is, who the batter is, where did the ball pitch, where did it reach the batter, what shot was played, where did the shot go, how many runs was yielded etc. It’s a time-consuming, laborious process - particularly for 4-day cricket!

However, from my understanding, it is compulsory for counties to ensure that all their first-team cricket is ‘coded’. I’ve never done it and have zero interest in doing so - for several reasons, and this is where I’m going with the future of analysis.

Firstly, the future of many industries is automation. A lot of smart people in cricket who I’ve spoken to think that within a few years, ‘coding’ will be obsolete - because there will be future development for a system, such as Hawkeye, to do it without any human input. So anyone who is relying on this for a job will need to upskill, and quickly.

Secondly, it’s my belief that this is not the job of an analyst in the strictest definition. Do you think that a financial analyst, for example, logs stock market movement? Of course they don’t - they’ll have a system to do that sort of basic, time-consuming work for them. Their skill lies in interpretation of the data, not actually logging the data.

This is where I always find it tricky to answer the question I get asked a lot - does every team have an analyst? Yes, they do, but perhaps not in the strictest definition above. There’s a ton of difference between a coder and a strategist.

Due to this, my strong recommendation for aspiring analysts is for them to look at the next steps for the industry. Look at areas such as recruitment, strategy or data-driven advance scouting - areas which are still niche areas for cricket, where there are very few specialists or teams who currently employ people skilled in these areas (but there will be).

This requires a very different skill-set. You will need the ability to hypothesise, to throw yourself into historical data to try and understand what has worked and what hasn’t, learning how to build mathematical models to assess players, to interpret data to use it to tell a story - because most coaches don’t want a ton of data thrown at them, they want bulletpoint interpretation of the data.

All this requires independent thought and the ability to challenge conventional ‘wisdom’, which from what I understand from talking to a lot of people in the industry, often doesn’t seem to be actively encouraged - something I find pretty strange.

However, the industry is slowly changing. The opportunity and advantage for early adopters still exists. Some teams are waking up to the idea that maybe, just maybe, having a range of skillsets and opinions in a management group, encouraging healthy debate and challenge can be a good thing - and they’ll be the ones who will get the edges as the industry evolves.

Not only this, but the skillsets required to be part of the future of analysis in cricket should lend themselves to rising up the industry as well. For example, in football it’s now pretty commonplace that a good head of recruitment will have a decent chance of getting a Sporting Director or Director of Football role as their next promotion in the industry. The equivalent cricket role such as Director of Cricket or General Manager of franchises are definitely roles I have ambitions to move towards in the future.