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Naavi's Cricket Rating is Back
Naavi Cricket Rating was a novel rating for Cricket developed for the 1999 world cup. The concept was jointly developed by Naavi and his Cricket enthusiastic son Rakesh Nag. Those were the days when the Cricket rating system was new and the only popular rating was the Ceat rating which was not very satisfactory.
There was of course Kumble rating which was relatively better than Ceat rating.
Naavi and Rakesh with their experience in Cricket however felt that there was scope for a better rating system and developed a system ideally suited for Closed tournaments like World cup where a number of players would compete under more or less similar playing conditions. This would not be like other ratings which would perhaps compare Sehwag's innings in Multan with Laxman's innings in Durban and rate which is better.
The Naavi rating system had a fantastic success as the results were revealed over the Internet match by match and lead to the ultimate winner of the "Man of the World Cup 1999" title by Lance Klusner. It was no surprise that the expert Committee led by Sunil Gavaskar who were given the task of manually assessing the Man of the Tournament also arrived at the same conclusion. Some of the reports of interim analysis of the Best Player at the league stage, best Indian player etc were also reported in the Press from time to time.
The maiden entry of Naavi Rating caught the imagination of several cricket lovers world over.
Subsequently the rating systems of ICC were introduced and some of the principles which Naavi Rating introduced for the first time such as weigtage for "Opposition Strength" were incorporated in other rating systems as well. During the subsequent World Cups, Naavi did not present his ratings and analysis of performance due to his other pre-occupations.
Now with a renewed interest in the World Cup 2003, Naavi Rating is making a come back with a few more innovations. Rakesh has suggested some changes for improving the system. He is also taking up the major responsibility for managing the rating calculations during this world cup.
The important innovation this time is to recognize that a player's mental outlook on the game while setting a target and chasing or defending a target are different and it has an impact on the performance. Hence the evaluation of performance has to take the factor of whether the player is setting the target or defending a target into consideration. The batsmen sets the target if the his side is batting first and chasing the target if his side is batting second. A bowler is setting a target if his side is bowling first and is defending the target if his team is bowling second.
Another innovation is to increase the points earned by a bowler from 20 to 25 and 30 per wicket for the second and subsequent wickets. This is required to equate the bowler's performance with that of a batsman since a bowler cannot bowl for more than 10 overs as compared to a batsman who can play for the entire 50 overs where statistically he can play for around 150 plus balls or nearly 25 overs.
The other change we find is in the weightages accorded to different team for its batting and bowling strengths. This is one area where still some subjectivity is present since it has to take into account the expected pitch conditions in West Indies along with the team's overall strengths, injury problems etc. Hence even though on ICC ranking wise, Pakistan may deserve a better weightage for Bowling, the psychological impact of the recent controversies and the reduced morale of the players require the wieghtages to be placed at a lower level.
The rating would be calculated match by match and results would be put on the website. The calculations would be based on the official score card published.
The end objective of the system is to track the emergence of "Man of World Cup 2007". It is suggested that marketers can use this as a peg to run their own campaigns for promoting their products. Additionally performances at pre-knock out stage will be separately monitored since there after a few teams will be eliminated and their players would not be eligible for further points. It may be recalled that during 1999, Neil Jhonson of Zimbabwe was the leading player at the pre knockout stage and had his team played the same number of matches as South Africa, he would perhaps have beaten Klusner to the top place. Similarly, Robin Singh made a mark for India by his performance which placed him only below the leaders Ganguly and Dravid and ahead of players like Tendulkar, Pollock, Mcgrath and Ponting. The periodical reports provided interesting points for discussion about captains, wicket keepers etc.
I hope the ratings would continue to provide interesting discussion points during this world cup also.
At this point of time, no exclusive rights for the use of the rating has been given to any company and therefore one or more brands may run their campaigns based on the ratings.
Companies interested in any exclusive arrangement may contact Naavi at Naavi@vsnl.com
Naavi would also be prepared to discuss long term exploitation of the concept along with further refinements.
Naavi
February 16, 2007
