Abstract
When to declare the third innings in a test cricket match is a crucial decision directly impacting the outcome of the match. The captain of the side batting in the third innings takes into account factors like lead runs, batting strength of the opposition, favorability of the pitch, approximate number of overs left in the game, etc. to make the decision. The objective of this study is to develop a decision support system for the captain using machine learning algorithms to predict the outcome of a test match at different stages of the match. This will aid the captain to decide when to declare. Several new crucial factors are identified that affect the match outcome. Declaration decisions of past test matches are analyzed using probability functions of win, loss, and draw derived using these models. Previous researches have used only simple regression based techniques to predict the match outcome with low accuracy. Data of 354 test matches from 2008 to 2017 has been used to train and test the algorithms. Support vector machine is found to be the most accurate with an accuracy of 88.8%.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Zishan Muzeeb who carried out some preliminary analysis on this problem as part of a final year undergraduate project at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.
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Deval, G., Hamid, F. & Goel, M. When to declare the third innings of a test cricket match?. Ann Oper Res 303, 81–99 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-021-04094-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-021-04094-0