International T20 Cricket Rankings

[Alex Holowczak]

So, did Australia end up as ranked 9th and Ireland 10th for the purposes of the coming World Cup then?

Well, the qualifier was held in March, and the draw had been made in September last year.

[John McKenna]

But this is 'blitz' cricket - what an incongruously long lead time!

[Kevin Thurlow]

The draw in order of seeding within groups, and with current ranking in brackets is:-
A) England (2), India (7), Afghanistan (-)
B) Australia (9), West Indies (4), Ireland (10)
C) Sri Lanka (3), South Africa (1), Zimbabwe (11)
D) Pakistan (6), New Zealand (5), Bangladesh (8)

Top two from each group qualify for more group matches. There have been comments that the ranking system is not working too well as not many games have been played. And that it doesn't work anyway as it is based on wins and losses and is irrelevant who you play. Aus have only played Zim etc three times, whereas Ireland have only played the top teams six times, getting 5 losses and a no-result. Some sort of Elo system might be an improvement.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc-world-t ... 33245.html explains how the later groups work. If the right teams qualify, England, WIndies, Sri Lanka and New Zealand will be in one group, even if they all finish first or all finish second in the initial groups. This seems odd.

[Alex Holowczak]

Some sort of Elo system might be an improvement.

I did this for Test cricket, but got a bit bored of putting results in my csv file at about 2002 (so there's still about 500 matches out of 2000 to go!). I'll report back when I've finished...

[Kevin Thurlow]

"I did this for Test cricket, but got a bit bored of putting results in my csv file at about 2002 (so there's still about 500 matches out of 2000 to go!). I'll report back when I've finished..."

There's an issue of balancing sufficient games for it to mean something (if any rating system means something), or going back so far that the results are irrelevant, unless you want a "best ever" team. The brilliance of Rhodes, Hirst, Verity, Hutton, Bradman etc should not affect a team's current rating.

However, I'll leave Alex to do the work!

[Kevin Williamson]

If the right teams qualify, England, WIndies, Sri Lanka and New Zealand will be in one group, even if they all finish first or all finish second in the initial groups. This seems odd.

It does a bit, but I would presume it’s for TV scheduling and to ensure travelling supporters have tickets for the ‘right’ matches. It does all depend on avoiding the banana skins in the first round though, where tripping up against a ‘minnow’ could prove costly with only one other match to repair the damage. I recall England losing the opening game against Holland at Lord’s in 2009 which could have spoiled the tournament a bit…. but fortunately they did recover by beating Pakistan to scrape through.

[Alex Holowczak]

"I did this for Test cricket, but got a bit bored of putting results in my csv file at about 2002 (so there's still about 500 matches out of 2000 to go!). I'll report back when I've finished..."

There's an issue of balancing sufficient games for it to mean something (if any rating system means something), or going back so far that the results are irrelevant, unless you want a "best ever" team. The brilliance of Rhodes, Hirst, Verity, Hutton, Bradman etc should not affect a team's current rating.

However, I'll leave Alex to do the work!

It was based on Elo, so including every match ever was fundamental to the system. When I first got bored, I tried messing around with k factors. I'd concluded that k = 15 was too slow to change. I recall cricket in the 1990s, and I found that the West Indies were too slow to lose their #1 status to Australia. Australia had had better results for some period of time than West Indies, but they'd been so far behind them rating-wise, that it took them a while to catch up.

I found that a relatively high k factor, therefore, was important, otherwise it was too laggy. I think I settled on either k = 20 or k = 25 (the program I coded is on another machine!).

[Roger de Coverly]

I found that a relatively high k factor, therefore, was important, otherwise it was too laggy. I think I settled on either k = 20 or k = 25 (the program I coded is on another machine!).

I think you might expect that. Isn't the underlying statistic theory of Elo, the idea that "playing strength" whilst varying from one game to the next, is a random variable with a stable mean and it's that stable mean that the rating calculations are trying to establish?

You might expect the "playing strength" of a cricket team to change over fairly short time periods as players are replaced or even lose form.

[Alex Holowczak]

I found that a relatively high k factor, therefore, was important, otherwise it was too laggy. I think I settled on either k = 20 or k = 25 (the program I coded is on another machine!).

I think you might expect that. Isn't the underlying statistic theory of Elo, the idea that "playing strength" whilst varying from one game to the next, is a random variable with a stable mean and it's that stable mean that the rating calculations are trying to establish?

You might expect the "playing strength" of a cricket team to change over fairly short time periods as players are replaced or even lose form.

Absolutely. I started with k = 15, because that's what FIDE do, and decided to play around with it to see what happened.

The other issue is that over the course of a generation of cricketers (say, a 10-year period), in the olden days a country might only play 40-50 games in that time. Nowadays of course you'd play 100+ in that time. Countries like Bangladesh and Zimbabwe play far fewer. This also means a high k is needed, because the teams don't play often enough to give countries the chance to close big gaps.

[Paul McKeown]

Just a reminder in case anyone missed it: Wes Indies - Ireland T20 International 19 Feb. 2014.

[PeterFarr]

Just a reminder in case anyone missed it: Wes Indies - Ireland T20 International 19 Feb. 2014.

Good stuff, though Ireland should start trying to poach a few Englishmen - Morgan, Rankin and KP say. Then they really would be world-beaters.

[Paul McKeown]

KP poached by Ireland? That would be a delicious irony!

[David Robertson]

Go get him. He'll be kissing the badge and the Blarney before you can say "top o' the morning".

[PeterFarr]

He's already had the 3 lions tattoo on his arm re-worked into a shamrock.

[Mick Norris]

England lose to the Netherlands

Ashley Giles for England coach?