Cricket is one of the biggest sports in the world and has a history of over 150 years. The game started with Britishers playing a 5-day format and eventually shifting their focus to one-day internationals. However, in the last 2 decades, T20 cricket has gained more attention across the globe.
T20 cricket is a fast-paced format that has helped the sport to grow in European and African countries and compete directly with football. It has made other formats of cricket more competitive and all the teams now look forward to finding more cricketing talent in their respective countries in order to fulfil the demands in all the formats of the sport.
With growing attention towards the sport, there are multiple individuals and websites that have become the experts in predicting the outcome of cricket matches. In every game, these cricket pundits give away their predictions, and in most cases, things go as per their predictions.
These cricket match predictions can be player-centric, team-centric, or even session-centric in the red-ball format. It is an exciting prospect, but behind the curtains, there is a lot of work done to come to a conclusion.
In this article, we dive deep into the world of cricket predictions and understand the psychology of these cricket pundits.
1) Understanding the Team Combination
One of the biggest aspects of making a prediction of a cricket match is to understand the team combination of both teams who are involved in a match. A team combination speaks a lot about the performance of 11 men on the field. If a team has a good batting depth but has a major void in their bowling attack, they might not be able to stop the opposition from scoring runs and the hard work of the batters might go in vain. A lot of times it happens that both teams are evenly matched and they both have similar strengths and weaknesses. In this case, things become difficult to predict and that also makes the fixture thrilling and exciting. However, a cricket pundit who is an expert in knowing the team combination will be able to make the right prediction in these cases as well.
2) Player Statistics
There is a reason that statistics are considered the best way to predict anything in the world. The same rule also applies in cricket. Whenever two teams collide in cricket, the head-to-head stats are extremely important to study. These head-to-head stats tell us a story about which team can dominate the fixture. Another stats which are important before predicting an outcome of the game are the player performance stats. The records and numbers achieved by a batsman and the number of wickets scalped by a bowler in a recent fixture will tell the whole story of that player’s mindset for the upcoming fixture.
3) Pitch Report
Pitch plays an important role in cricket. A lot of times teams ignore the pitch factor while making their strategies for a tour and end up failing in the series or a fixture. A cricket pundit studies the pitch and then looks at the team combination of both teams to predict the right outcome of a match. With pitch reports, weather conditions also play an important role in the case of a Test match because both can change during the game.
4) Key Players
Studying the recent performance of key players from both sides is very important while predicting the outcome. The key players in teams are those players who are in the right form and who have won matches for the team in the past. These key players can perform in any situation even though it is a highly pressured game.