When will Sri Lanka win another World Cup?
A brief history of the Men’s ODI Cricket World Cup, and some predictions
Today (March 17th) is the 25th anniversary of Sri Lanka’s first and only win in a (Men’s ODI) Cricket World Cup. We celebrated that win for months, perhaps years. From time to time, I still watch the epic final, the hammering India got in the semi-final and the inimitable “Chokra” song.
The days around the 1996 World Cup were incredibly dark. A terrorist attack on the Central Bank killed 91 people and injured over 1,000 just a few weeks before the final. Australia and the West Indies refused to play in Colombo, citing security concerns. These circumstances make 1996 particularly significant and even more memorable.
While hardly a comparison, the present is pretty dark for Sri Lankan Cricket. While in the past we used to cheer winning tournaments, these days we cheer winning matches. Will Sri Lanka win another World Cup? Given the current state, I doubt many people are even considering the question.
But since it’s Christmas (or at least a comparably important day for Sri Lankan Cricket), I will attempt it. Since I’m no cricket pundit, I attempt an entirely data-driven (i.e. quantitative, as opposed to qualitative or opinion-driven) answer.
The Invincibility Score
In my previous article, The Invincibility Score, I proposed “a more meaningful alternative to Cricket Ratings”. The idea was to design a rating system that had some real-world meaning. The “invincibility score” of a team was the probability that it beats all the other ODI teams.
“Probability of Winning the World Cup”
For this article, I adapted the invincibility score’s underlying statistics to compute the “probability of winning the world cup” at a given time. [It assumes that the world cup is played in a neutral location (i.e. a sort of average of all the venues), assumes a league-style world cup (like 2019 and 1992). For simplicity, I only look at the 9 test playing teams.]
When we plot the “probability of winning the world cup” for each team by time, we get the following graph:
A Brief history of the Men’s ODI Cricket World Cup
The West Indies had an almost 100% chance of winning the 1975 and 1979 World Cups. And as expected, they did.
While the said West Indies had similar odds of winning in 1983, India, considered an almost impossible underdog, won. 1983 was the first in a series of world cups that were won, not by the favourites but by underdogs, or at least “not so favourites”. West Indies were expected to win again in 1987, but Australia ended up winning. England were favourites in 1992; instead, Pakistan won. Australia were top-seeds in 1996, instead Sri Lanka won. Finally, in 1999, favourites South Africa was choked out, while a down-but-steadily rising Australia won.
Like the West Indies in the ’70s and ’80s, Australia dominated the 2000s, and were favourites and won the 2003, 2007 and 2015 World Cups.
The exception was 2011 when there was a resurgence of both India and Sri Lanka. The two nations met in the world cup finals, and India (marginally favourites) won.
The lead-up to 2019 was a battle between India and England. The latter was the favourite and ended-up winning the world cup.
[Above, by “favourites”, I mean “favourites according to my statistical model”. I don’t mean favourites according to the then zeitgeist or what historians say.]
So, When will Sri Lanka win another World Cup?
Let’s look at Sri Lanka in more detail.
Sri Lanka’s odds of winning a world cup were almost zero until about 1993. It began to gradually increase in the lead-up to 1996. Sri Lanka’s odds peaked after 1996. If there was a World Cup in late 1997, Sri Lanka would have almost certainty (77%) won.
There was a slight peak (23%) in the lead-up to 2003, when Sri Lanka were Semi-Finalists. Oddly, Sri Lanka’s odds in 2007 were relatively low (<5%), despite reaching the finals. The next prominent peak (over 40%) was in 2011 when Sri Lanka was Runner-up to India.
After a peak in early 2014, the odds crashed and have not recovered. Since about 2017, Sri Lanka’s probability of winning a world cup has been almost zero.
Philosophical Conclusions
Statistically, Sri Lanka has no chance in hell of winning a Men’s ODI World Cup anytime soon. That’s the bad news.
However, I’ll conclude with two fragments of philosophical hope:
- World Cups have been won by underdogs in the past — many pundits considered 1996 impossible — the future is fair game; and
- Sri Lanka’s growth in the lead up to 1996 and beyond, as impressive. There is no reason why this cannot be repeated.
Until then we can always celebrate 1996!
