Bowlership: Examining the Existence of Bowler Synergies in Cricket

TL;DR

This paper investigates the existence of bowling partnerships in cricket, introduces the concept of bowlerships, and demonstrates their potential use in team selection and in-match strategy through network analysis and an algorithm.

Contribution

It defines and analyzes bowlerships in cricket, providing a novel perspective on player synergies and proposing a new algorithm for team selection based on these partnerships.

Findings

Bowlerships exist in cricket matches.

Bowlership networks can inform team strategy.

Algorithm bowler-select effectively utilizes bowlerships.

Abstract

Player synergies are a salient feature of team sports. In the team game of cricket, player synergies may be reflected in batting partnerships. Batting partnerships have been analysed extensively. In this paper, we introduce and precisely define bowling partnerships. We explain their importance, and analyse ball-by-ball data from three formats of the game: 2,034 one-day international matches, 634 Test matches and 1,432 Twenty-20 international matches, in order to find such bowling partnerships ("bowlerships"). We find that bowlerships exist. Further, we construct bowlership networks based on these pairwise synergies. We assert that these bowlership networks can be analysed for team selection before a match, and making bowling changes during the match. We present Algorithm bowler-select that selects a team based on bowlerships.