Prediction of ICC T20 WCC 2022 Winner

Despite Hockey being the national sport of the country, it is cricket which rules over the hearts of the citizens. It creates a lot of excitement and frenzy amongst the fans of the game. Cricket is like a religion in India and the players are considered to be demi-gods. It is the most-watched sport in India and people even miss their schools and offices when any major international match is happening. Cricket unites Indians like nothing else and from kids to adults; everyone keeps track of the cricket score whenever the Indian team is playing.

ICC T20 World Cup 2022

The 2022 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup is scheduled to be the eighth ICC Men’s T20 World Cup tournament, scheduled to be played in October and November 2022 in Australia.

The twelve teams that reached the Super 12 phase of the 2021 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup automatically qualified for the 2022 tournament. Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, Pakistan, New Zealand and South Africa all qualified directly for the Super 12 phase of this tournament, based on their performances in the 2021 tournament and their rankings as of 15 November 2021. Namibia, Scotland, Sri Lanka and the West Indies were all placed in the group stage of the competition.

How we are Predicting ?

We are living in the world Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. So, everything can be predicted using AI & ML but till certain accuracy. We can’t predict will 100% accuracy . In this prediction , we are using SVM (Support Vector Machine) algorithm for predicting the winner.

Support Vector Machine(SVM)

It is machine learning based supervised learning model with associated learning algorithms that analyze data for classification and regression analysis. SVMs are one of the most robust prediction methods, being based on statistical learning frameworks. SVM maps training examples to points in space so as to maximize the width of the gap between the two categories. New examples are then mapped into that same space and predicted to belong to a category based on which side of the gap they fall.

Data

For this project, we collected the T20 international matches records from 2010 to February 2022. Since , that record will be sufficient for testing and preparing the model. Apart from it , we considered the current T20 ranking of the team in February 2022 and for we have taken the match fixtures for ICC T20 WCC 2022 from their official website.

Previous record : https://cricsheet.org/

Current ranking : https://www.cricbuzz.com/

Match fixtures : https://www.t20worldcup.com/

Tools and Environment

1. Jupyter Notebook
2. Numpy
3. Pandas
4. Seaborn
5. Scikit-learn

Factors we are considering for prediction

We are considering two important factors for predicting. First, Number of wins in last six matches played before current matches. Obviously, the team which is doing well from last six matches is having more probability of winning. But , there may be a case in which both teams have won equal matches in their last six matches. So, in that case, we are taking the current ranking into the consideration that will help to predict in that case. So, the two factors are :-

1. Number of Wins in last six matches from current match.
2. Current ranking

Assumptions we made

Since, 12 teams will be participating in this World Cup, 4 among them need to first win the qualifier matches to get eligible for World Cup. So, by analyzing the current performance of teams in qualifier matches ,we have assumed the results of qualifier matches as follows:-

Group A Winner : Sri Lanka

Group A Runner-Up : Namibia

Group B Winner : West Indies

Group B Runner-Up : Scotland

We are predicting the results of qualifier matches because there are many teams which haven’t played enough matches so that we can predict i.e. less data is available for it. That’s why we are assuming their results.

Code

Data cleaning code : https://github.com/HarshDeswal/ICC-T20-world-cup-2022-Prediction/blob/main/Notebooks/Data_Cleaning.ipynb

Modelling code : https://github.com/HarshDeswal/ICC-T20-world-cup-2022-Prediction/blob/main/Model/modelling.ipynb

Accuracy

Since, cricket is totally unpredictable game , game changes even in a single ball . But , through the analysis of previous records and accuracy of 62.14% we have done the prediction using SVM.

#Accuracy score
accuracy = model.score(X_test, y_test)
accuracy
0.6214285714285714

Prediction Results

Results till League matches

1.Australia  Vs  New Zealand :  New Zealand

2.England  Vs  Afghanistan : England 

3.Group A Winner  Vs  Group B Runner Up : Group A Winner 

4.India  Vs  Pakistan : India 

5.Bangladesh  Vs  Group A Runner up :  Group A Runner up

6.South Africa  Vs  Group B Winner : South Africa 

7.Australia  Vs  Group A Winner : Australia 

8.England  Vs  Group B Runner UP :  Group B Runner UP

9.New Zealand  Vs  Afghanistan : New Zealand 

10.South Africa  Vs  Bangladesh : South Africa 

11.India  Vs  Group A Runner Up : India 

12.Pakistan  Vs  Group B Runner Up : Pakistan 

13.Afghanistan  Vs  Group B Runner UP :  Group B Runner UP

14.England  Vs  Australia : England 

15.New Zealand  Vs  Group A Winner : New Zealand 

16.Bangladesh  Vs  Group B Winner :  Group B Winner

17.Pakistan  Vs  Group A Runner Up : Pakistan 

18.India  Vs  South Africa : India 

19.Australia  Vs  Group B Runner Up : Australia 

20.Afghanistan  Vs  Group A winner :  Group A winner

21.England  Vs  New Zealand : England 

22.Group B winner  Vs  Group A Runner Up : Group B winner 

23.India  Vs  Bangladesh : India 

24.Pakistan  Vs  South Africa : Pakistan 

25.New Zealand  Vs  Group B Runner Up : New Zealand 

26.Australia  Vs  Afghanistan : Australia 

27.England  Vs  Group A Runner Up : England 

28.South Africa  Vs  Group A Runner Up : South Africa 

29.Pakistan  Vs  Bangladesh : Pakistan 

30.India  Vs  Group B Winner : India
From the Modelling the Point table as follows:

Group 1

Team			Win
Afghanistan		0
Australia		3
England			4
New Zealand		4
Group A Winner		2
Group B Runner Up	2

Group 2

Team			Win
Bangladesh		0
India			5
Pakistan		4
South Africa		3
Group B Winner		2
Group A Runner Up	1
Semi Finals

India Vs England : India
New Zealand Vs Pakistan : New Zealand
Final

India Vs New Zealand : India

Probable Winner of World Cup : India

Conclusion

According to this model India is going to Win the World.

This article is written to show how Machine Learning can be used to calculate probabilities in a simulation and does not attempt to actually get the results right since the data used is not enough for it .

#Disclaimer : This article is for educational purpose. We are not providing any recommendation for betting and other fantasy games. So, we are not liable for any financial or economical losses of anyone.

Further Scope

1. More features can be used for getting better precision and accuracy.
2. More advanced machine learning algorithm can be used.

Team Member

Harsh Deswal : www.linkedin.com/in/harsh-deswal-87400a223

Hari Krishna

Suhash Reddy T

References

ICC 2019 cricket world cup prediction using machine learning.

1.4. Support Vector Machines

Support-vector machine - Wikipedia