History of the Fielding Performance Measure

Dr. Hemanta Saikia, Assistant Professor at Assam Agriculture University, Dibyojyoti Bhattacharjee, Professor at Assam University and Hoffie Lemmer, Professor at University of Johansberg) developed a fielding performance measure for cricket in 2012. Prior to that, there was no serious work on fielding performance measurement in cricket. Although different websites and organizations often ranked cricketers for their performance in batting, bowling and fielding, yet there was no scientific technique to assess fielding skills of players. The work was published in the International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching, Vol. 7, No. 4 in 2012. The research paper was entitled “A Double Weighted Tool to Measure the Fielding Performance in Cricket”. Later the work was referred by different authors working on sports analytics though out the world. Mention can be made of the works of Tim Swartz at the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Simon Fraser University, Canada and in the works of Danielle Catherine MacDonald of Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. Tim Swartz writes in his work that - “The first quantitative investigation of fielding was undertaken by Saikia, Bhattacharjee and Lemmer”. Feeling the need of software to complement the Fielding Performance Measure, the first software was developed by a student team of Dr. Ranjit Singh, who is currently a Professor at IIIT Allahabad. But later feeling the difficulty of sharing the software in public domain, Dr. Himadri Barman, Assistant Professor at Centre for Management Studies, Dibrugarh University developed the current version of the software.

Working of the Formula

The measurement technique that has been developed works in three layers. In the first layer, it is checked if the fielding activity corresponding to a particular ball has led to a dismissal or not. In the second level, it is checked if the dismissal has taken place - then what the quality of the batsman dismissed is ascertained. A batsman with higher rating if dismissed shall give more credit to the fielder than some batsman dismissed lower down the order. However, if there was no dismissal then the fielding activity shall be assessed by the performance of the fielder corresponding to that fielding activity. For example, a ground fielding followed by a poor throw shall give lesser praise to the fielder than a sharp fielding and an instant throw at the right end. In the third level, the difficulty associated with each of the fielding activity, whether a dismissal or otherwise is quantified. In this level, the technique tries to quantify the difficulty level corresponding to each fielding activity of the fielder. For example, if a fielder saves runs by aborting a sure shot for a boundary from the batsman; then the fielder shall get a higher score than a routine save of the boundary. The weights are subjective. As there is not sufficient fielding related statistics available so fielding has to be quantified through some element of subjectivity in its measures. A fielding activity leading to a fall of wicket (run out or catch) leads to loss of resources of the opponent team so such an activity is given more importance compared to ground fielding. The quantified fielding performance of a given player in different balls of the match is than added together to get the overall fielding performance of that player in the match. The fielding performance of a player in different matches is also summative in nature. This can help us to rank fielders in a series or a tournament.

About the Software

Front-end has been developed using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP. The back-end uses MySQL as the database for storing fielding related data. The online system which is named Field-o-meter can be used to record fielding data, display fielding data, compute fielding performance measure and generate reports. The system has facilities for different categories of users, viz., administrators, data entry operator and viewers. Users need to login to access the system. Data corresponding to teams, fielders and matches played can be added, deleted and edited. Fielding data can be downloaded in excel format.