Change-points in cricket run-scoring with permuted trends: Applications through functional alignment and outlier detection in excitement quantification and bolstering advocacy

Supervised statistical techniques - such as predicting runs or wickets or outcomes of specific deliveries, or optimal field placements, players’ worth and contribution - have been deployed to explore a cricket match with a regularity verging on obsession. While goals that fuel these interests are vital and worth pursuing, scant attention has been paid to test whether the (potentially) economic purpose that animates this line of work ignores how or why the sport enthralls, and, occasionally, overwhelms its audience. In this work, we erect a firm bridge that connects excitement patterns of different kinds of sports. The tool helps check whether a new sport could merit a permanent place in global platforms such as the Olympics. Fundamental to the construction are change-points which detect moments of deviation from an ongoing trend. Through novel statistics and permuted trends, we detect these points in utility rate differentials for cricket, and effective playing spaces for soccer. These points locate where interest gets generated. Through the proximities of those change-points, we construct excitement meters, which, applied on 124 T20 tournament-season combinations, unearth 14 functional outliers and two (phase and amplitude-based) alignment clusters, showing how T20 cricket matches attain an optimum balance between unpredictability and chaosless-ness. We, therefore, focus more on entire cricketing tournaments and on the overall health of the sport than on a specific match. This shift sheds vital light on how cricket fares similarly to other sports such as soccer that are already included in the Olympics. Using excitement measurement as an example, we point out other far-reaching potentials of this motivational broadening.