Blog

There are three games in the BBL 2019-2020 that give outliers and medians after the Sixers' game against the Heat. All three games involve the Stars who won all three games. The Stars batted first twice (v Sixers and v Heat) and second once (v Scorchers).

Introduction I really enjoy writing blog posts on Clyde Street. I have been blogging on WordPress since 2008 and am approaching my 2000th post. I have always thought that my blog was a way for me to think out aloud and explore ideas in teaching, coaching, learning and performance. I did not anticipate an audience for my writing but I have been surprised that Clyde Street has had nearly half a million visits since 2008. In addition to thinking out loud, one of...

The Hurricanes have defeated the Renegades by four runs in a #BBL game played on 21 January (link). The Hurricanes batted first and set the Renegades the rate of 19 runs per wicket to win the game. This season in the BBL, there have been seven other occasions (in non-Duckworth-Lewis games) when a team has set a rate of 19 or more runs. All these games have been won by the team setting that rate. The Renegades are the team that has come closest to winning when...

I have a record of 37 BBL games for the 2019-2020 (link) that were completed without Duckworth-Lewis calculations. My data from these games suggest that the median winning score is 166 runs and the median losing score is 145 runs. The rate set at the end of the first innings is a median of 16 runs per wicket. My ggplot for the 37 games (with a geom_vline and a geom_hline) is: Using the...

I have 142 examples of a team scoring first and losing in six European football leagues this season. The leagues are EPL, Ligue 1, Bundesliga, Serie A, Eredevisie, and the Primeira. For teams that overcome a first goal and win, the median time to equalise is 22 minutes. The median time to win a game after going a goal behind is 46 minutes. My ggplot of these 142 games and my geom_vline and geom_hline (in black) to indicate the medians is:

Two recent games in the BBL have resulted in low scores. Both games involved the Brisbane Heat. On 17 January, the Adelaide Strikers defeated the Brisbane Heat by ten wickets (link). Brisbane Heat batted first and set a rate of 10 runs per wicket for the Strikers. It is very rare that a team does not chase down a rate of 10. My ggplot of this game: In a second game on 19 January, the...

I have had lots of time in recent months to think about pedagogical practice in sport analytics. A number of my posts in Clyde Street (link) have sought to address the changing world of sport analytics. The catalyst for my thinking has been Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel's speaker deck, Let them eat cake (first)! (link). I found her backward design ideas compelling and they encouraged me to think about how we prepare analysts for the world of work. Not all students will find a...

Introduction Sam Gregory (link) has posted Getting into Sports Analytics 2.0 (19 January 2020) (link). Sam's aim is to update the post he wrote in 2017, Getting into Sports Analytics (link) "the analytics world has changed since 2017: more public data sources, more job postings, and almost certainly more competition for those job postings". I think Sam's 2.0 article resonates strongly with some of the analytics issues raised in Clyde Street (link). 1.0 In his 2017 article, which I...

Introduction I am delighted to introduce Ian's account, in his own words, of developments at the University of Brirish Columbia during his four decades there. I believe that the work Ian undertook had a profound impact of the development of sport analysis in Canada and the United Kigdom. Ian's account is another part of the jigsaw that is our shared history of analysis. It is a companion piece to developments at Liverpool Polytechnic (link). Ian's work profoundly affected me. I thought his early...

Introduction Xiao-Li Meng, author of Data Science: An Artificial Ecosystem (link) noted "I used the word “artificial” to signal that data science is both human-created and very intensively computer-based" (link). He added "as we advance deeper into the digital age, our societal demands for data scientists naturally rise in both quantity and quality". However, Xiao-Li points out "compared to the research progress on data science methods, the research on data science education is still at the dinosaurs’ age" (link). In his discussion of...

Introduction I met Alan Ryder's work when I started to compile an expected goals bibliography (link). His 2004 paper (link) is regarded as a seminal paper in the study of shot quality. The subtitle of the paper is a methodology for the study of the quality of a hockey team’s shots allowed. In a subsequent paper (2007), Alan looked carefully at the data he used in his 2004 paper and discussed reliance on a data set and the potential...

The Brisbane Heat 3 for 114 has defeated the Adelaide Strikers 110 by seven wickets with 28 balls to spare (link). The Strikers batted first and set the Heat a rate of 11 runs per partnership to win the game. At present, the median winning score in BBL is 168 and the median losing score is 146. The median rate set by the team batting first is 17 runs per wicket. The Adelaide rate was the lowest set in the BBL 2019-2020 to date. A low...

Introduction I have been interested for a long time in micro credentials (link). This week, I came across Beverley Oliver's work (link) on employability in disrupted economies and accreditation of learning. Her work formed the basis of a post I prepared for Sport Wizard (link). In it she shares her definitions of employabilty, micro credentials and work integrated learning. I share that blog post here. Employability and Credentials In 2015, Beverley Oliver wrote Redefining graduate...

Introduction This week, Mark Upton has shared two links about leadership (link). The first was by Paul Taylor and was titled Ending Our Obsession With Leadership (link). The second was by Rosie Angharad and was titled Caring: the bread and butter of sports coaching (link). Following Thanks to Jo Gibson's work (link), I find it very difficult to contemplate leadership without considering followership and to move away from a leader-centric paradigm (link). like Nicolas Bastardoza and Mark van Vugtbt...

Introduction This post introduces Richard Pollard in an account of the history of sport analytics. Richard completed his PhD at the University of the South Paciific in 1989. It was titled A statistical analysis of team performance at soccer. Richard's 1997 paper (link), written with Charles Reep, gives an insight into his PhD. The paper explores the assessment of strategies during possession. Richard and Charles discuss how a quantitative variable is developed representing the probability of a goal being scored, minus the probability of one being conceded....