This World Cup,deconstruct some conventional cricket wisdom. With the World Cup less than a week away,be sure that we will be given to occasional meditations on crickets exceptionalism. The game,even as its administrators and players find ever more ingenious ways to increase revenue,continues to be unsettled by a persistent anxiety. Will it ever find ground fertile enough to strike deep roots outside its long established strongholds? Think about it. What does it say about the expanse of a sport if its biggest event is returned,in hard-fought bids,to the subcontinent for the third time in seven World Cups? (Just as well for the local teams,but more on that in a bit.) And think about the nervousness this imposes on cricket and those of us who love it so dearly. We must take every big occasion to check on the health of the sport. And even when each check-up yields optimism,as it inevitably must,we will drift off to recaps of what makes cricket so different and thereby sets apart the informed fan from the rest. Because a scorecard is not just a scorecard,and to each match we must bring a narrative written over decades,and carefully updated profiles of its great sons. The scoreline must reflect all of this,simple number-crunching will not do. Because cricket is unique. Is it really? It does come as a bit of a shock to find that on a popularly held belief in a teams home advantage,cricket closely adheres to the confirmatory statistics across all sports. In a book just out,Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won,economist Tobias J Moskowitz and Sports Illustrated writer L Jon Wertheim,mention cricket just once,while tackling one supposed myth after another to settle which is true and which is false. Home advantage,it appears,is a fact: For all the conventional sports wisdom that can be proved,deconstructed,or,at the very least,called into question,home team advantage is no myth. Indisputably,it exists. And it exists with remarkable consistency. Across all sports and all levels,going back decades,from Japanese baseball to Brazilian soccer to college basketball,the majority of the time the team hosting a game will win. The writers are predisposed to American examples. But beyond NBA,NFL and NHL,that suspicion is validated,and how: Across 43 professional soccer leagues in 24 different countries spanning Europe,South America,Asia,Africa,Australia,and the United States (covering more than 66,000 games),the home field advantage in soccer worldwide is 62.4 per cent. For nearly every rugby match in more than 125 countries dating back to as early as 1871,the home field advantage is 58 per cent. For international cricket dating back to 1877,covering matches for ten countries,the home winning percentage is 60 per cent. Thats Moskowitz and Wertheims solitary reference to cricket,but as we prepare to sit with our cricket diary,it will be interesting to see if our jottings in the weeks ahead adhere to their findings elsewhere on other sports. Some of which are: n Referees are after all human,and on their every decision hinge how the play will drift. But the writers argue that being human,they are reluctant to insinuate themselves into the game when the stakes get higher. They know sins of omission will earn them far less wrath than a sin of commission. There is,they say,an unwritten direction to NBA officials: When the game steps up,you step down. This may not even out,if the bias is not random but systemic. Also,star players get gentler treatment,not because officials are biased towards them,but because because they are wary of influencing the game. And while players get no more conservative near the end of a game,the officials do tend to,obviously aware that their calls could determine the end result. And dont think this is limited to American sports: A European colleague snickered to us,You wouldnt see this in soccer. But we did. We looked at 15 years of matches in the English Premier League,the Spanish La Liga,and the Italian Serie A leagues. European officials are no better at overcoming omission bias than their American counterparts. Fouls,offsides and free kicks diminish significantly as close matches draw to a close. n Similarly,being human too,players and coaches are prone to loss aversion. But: In the rare instances when coaches in sports embrace risk systematically not in the face of desperation but as a rule there is a common characteristic. It has nothing to do with birth order or brain type or level of education. Rather those coaches are secure in their employment. If the experiment combusts,they have little to lose (i.e. their jobs). * Teams win at home because they benefit from a kinder,gentler schedule. * And it seems the louder and more opinionated the home crowds,the more they succeed in orienting officials bias in favour of their teams. Proof comes from a Spanish grandmothers handwritten notes while watching La Liga matches. So keep jotting down the action and numbers these coming weeks,and who knows what myths you may bust,or validate as truisms. mini.kapoor@expressindia.com
