Determining the playing 11 based on opposition squad: An IPL illustration

Indian Premier League (IPL) is the most popular T20 domestic sporting league globally. Player selection is crucial in winning the competitive IPL tournament. Thus, team management select 11 players for each match from a team's squad of 15 to 25 players. Different player statistics are analysed to select the best playing 11 for each match. This study attempts an approach where the on-field player performance is used to determine the playing-11. A player's on-field performance in a match is computed as a single metric considering a player's attributes against every player present in the opposition squad. For this computation, past ball-by-ball data is cleaned and mined to generate data containing player-vs-player performance attributes. Next, the various performance attributes for a player-vs-player combination is converted into a player's performance rating by computing a weighted score of the performance attributes. Finally, an optimisation model is proposed and developed to determine the best playing-11 using the computed performance ratings. The developed optimisation model suggests the playing-11 that maximises the possibility of winning against a given opponent. The proposed procedure to determine the playing-11 for an IPL match is demonstrated using past data from 2008-20. The demonstration indicates that for matches in the league stage, the suggested playing-11 by model and the actual playing-11 have a similar to 7% similarity across all teams. The remaining similar to 3% are different from those selected in the actual team. Nevertheless, this difference approximately yields a similar to Indian Premier League (IPL) is the most popular T20 domestic sporting league globally. Player selection is crucial in winning the competitive IPL tournament. Thus, team management select 11 players for each match from a team's squad of 15 to 25 players. Different player statistics are analysed to select the best playing 11 for each match. This study attempts an approach where the on-field player performance is used to determine the playing-11. A player's on-field performance in a match is computed as a single metric considering a player's attributes against every player present in the opposition squad. For this computation, past ball-by-ball data is cleaned and mined to generate data containing player-vs-player performance attributes. Next, the various performance attributes for a player-vs-player combination is converted into a player's performance rating by computing a weighted score of the performance attributes. Finally, an optimisation model is proposed and developed to determine the best playing-11 using the computed performance ratings. The developed optimisation model suggests the playing-11 that maximises the possibility of winning against a given opponent. The proposed procedure to determine the playing-11 for an IPL match is demonstrated using past data from 2008-20. The demonstration indicates that for matches in the league stage, the suggested playing-11 by model and the actual playing-11 have a similar to 7% similarity across all teams. The remaining similar to 3% are different from those selected in the actual team. Nevertheless, this difference approximately yields a similar to 13.32% increase in performance rating compared to the existing team.3.32% increase in performance rating compared to the existing team.

Automated summary

This study attempts to determine the playing-11 for the Indian Premier League (IPL) matches using on-field player performance. An optimization model is developed to maximize the chances of winning against a given opponent. The demonstration using past data shows a 7% similarity between the suggested playing-11 and the actual playing-11, with a 3% difference resulting in a 13.32% increase in performance rating compared to the existing team.