Amol Desai

Beyond the Hype: A Closer Look at IPL 2025’s Saliva & Swing Debate Uncovering the Truth Behind the Perceived Increase in Swing

A close look at the perceived increase in swing with the old ball at IPL 2025.

As my pre-teen would say, "I call cap!"

medium.com/boundary-lin...

In cricket, we don't have any data on spin axis, seam orientation etc. One additional aspect that is unique to cricket, is ball condition.

Would love to pick your brain on pre-match pitch measurements among other things. That's the one aspect I have least exposure to.

With pitch conditions evolving over a long IPL season over multiple venues, this will be a key topic.

Using this data with ball tracking can be powerful.

One can be greedy & ask for more fidelity around ball tracking but we can leave that to another time & stick w/ baby steps.

Surely, pitch curators must be using these and more at some stage of pitch preparation.

We've been stuck in the era of sticking keys in wickets and knocking on them for far too long.

Enable the experts with more information!

It's surprising that soil compaction and humidity sensors haven't been leveraged to "read the wicket" and gain a competitive edge.

There's plenty of discourse on pitch analysis in the context of toss decisions. While this can be relevant, its true value lies in selection, deployment, and arsenal usage (player level).

Taking a holistic value perspective might help prioritize improvements in "reading" the wkt

Here's are Kohli & Smith's aging curves overlaid.

Both are now at or below the replacement level, which is an average Test batter who is ~28yrs of age.

...in Ponting & Jayawardene

& outside the club in Kohli (I think
@jarrodkimber.bsky.social
pointed this out recently)

But the extent of Kohli's decline is unparalleled in the 10K club.

Steve Smith's career from an aging curve perspective.

He's had a more rapid decline than the average 10K club batter.

But he has company in the 10K club...

1999 - Tendulkar 's first test double hundred

I am extremely grateful to Doug Fearing & Luke Bornn at Zelus and Jake Lush McCrum, @gilolindsay.bsky.social, Zubin B. & Kumar S. at RR for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this journey, for the flexibility & involvement that I had with my role and for the support along the way.

It has been an absolute blast and a privilege working with some of the most amazing minds in sports data science and Cricket itself and helping bring advanced analytics to the sport that means so much to me.

Working at the highest level in Cricket has taught me a great deal about the game and how it works under the hood. It has also left me hungry for more and aware of pitfalls and opportunities. I walk away from this enriched by the experience and by the friends I have made.

Update Thread: I have decided to take a break from my role with Zelus Analytics supporting @rajasthanroyals.bsky.social. I'll continue to work independently to understand the game better, publish my work and be on the lookout for opportunities to work w/ leadership at teams & in the media.

The visual here reminded me of a piece I did several years ago where I used a graph representation to assess "momentum"
Something like this can be done for Tests, but we'd probably want to look at a longer period than 1yr.
tinyurl.com/4emjctuk