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We changed what time this site’s daily email went out recently. We can’t be bothered checking what time range we set it to and we also can’t be bothered working out what impact British Summer Time will have. As such, this post is a preview of the India v Australia match written in the knowledge that you may well be reading when the result is already known.
We wouldn’t be making any predictions anyway. Predictions can quickly look foolish. They have a thing that constantly tries to predict which team’s going to win running throughout each match of this World T20. It’s called The Win Predictor. The Win Predictor is making a good case for being rebranded The Momentum Disprover.
At one point quite early on in England’s match against Sri Lanka, The Win Predictor indicated 100 per cent likelihood of an England victory. England did win, but not before it had later had Sri Lanka’s likelihood of a win up around 70 per cent.
We made a comment about The Win Predictor effectively taking the piss out of its own earlier predictions during that game and one of the founders of the website behind it (CricViz) got in touch. We felt bad, because it’s not really the Win Predictor that’s at fault, it’s the game it’s trying to model.
T20 matches tend to progress in surges. Get a partnership and the run-rate can skyrocket. A wicket or two and it can come to a standstill. The swings can be so swift and dramatic that it can make earlier predictions look preposterous. Your general feeling as a viewer is: ‘Why should I pay heed to this prediction now when the one five minutes ago was so wildly different?’
Like we say, it’s not the predictor that’s the issue here, it’s the format. At the same time, that uncertainty is what keeps us watching. One thing’s for sure though. As far as India v Australia goes, the big story is already known: New Zealand knocked one of them out.
The “similar deliveries” now has an unhelpful half-sentence of text following the clickbait headlines. The clickbait headlines were more fun. The half-sentence kinda spoils them.
Just seemed like people might have got a bit blind to it.
I’m with BailOut on this one, yer Maj. Although that said, the “Get The Delorean…” section has rather taken over as my favourite procrastination source from this site.
The Get The De Lorean section is ALMOST AS GOOD AS TOP TRUMPS WAS. Ahem ahem.
It might turn out that Afghanistan are the only team to beat world champs West Indies in this tournament.
This is increasingly strong evidence that Afghanistan should not be allowed to qualify for future events, because they just spoil things, don’t they?
Steve Smith it’s not your night son.
As long as Shane Watson gets out LBW if Australia lose, I’ll be happy.
Disappointed.
The ‘win predictor’ suffers from people’s overconfidence in the reliability of numbers vs words. Without knowung the methofology
I mean, “without knowing the methodology, it is difficult to know how reasonable its predictions are, but surely a ‘100%’ chance of victory can only be assigned to a tea that has already won. I am assuming that the figures relate to the chance of each team winning, given that (i) they add up to 100% and (ii) no-one has told me any different”.
…and I mean ‘team’ rather than ‘tea’, my phone’s habit of making the keyboard disappear seemingly at random is having a noticeable imp
act on the legibility of my comments
I thought the phrase “100% chance of victory can only be assigned to a tea” was a brilliant piece of writing, straight from the “what does he know of cricket who only cricket knows?” department.
It is indeed, in a very real sense, tea that should always be deemed the victor after a day of cricket. Who in their right mind would obsess about the result of a cricket match, once a splendid tea had been enjoyed by all concerned?
Australia asked India, and Virat Kohli, to chase. You probably could have predicted it from there.
the more I hate Kohli, the better he plays, the more I hate him … etc.
Now the Aussies are out, we do need a new hate figure to unit behind (or rather, not). Maybe Vi-Rat could be he?
Unite! As a unit etc etc.
Chris Gayle is my hate figure.
You can’t have him.