Analytics-driven facts build cricket strategies today: JK Cement CIO Ashok Cherian

With Cricket World Cup season in full swing, every household seems to have its own expert. They seem to know exactly who should figure in the playing eleven, which batsman should come in at what time and which bowler should open and who should take the last one. Well, these self-proclaimed cricket gurus can take heart in the fact that technology can actually help predict all this and more. Technology is an integral part of sports today and cricket is no exception. Analytics, particularly, is making cricket viewing more fun and engaging. The combination of cricket and analytics not only works for fans, but also helps teams, players and coaches design a winning strategy. We, at Firstpost, got in touch with Ashok Cherian, who is a respected CIO and also a cricket fan, to discuss the role of analytics in cricket and how he sees the game with a dash of technology. Analytics has always been a part of decision making in the enterprise, and is one of the top technology priority for Indian CIOs. But, if we talk about cricket, “analytics has changed the way an average fan eats, lives and digests cricket,” believes Ashok Cherian, chief information officer, JK Cement Ltd.“It has bought out the hidden and less known facts regarding the play and performance of teams along with players,” he says. [caption id=“attachment_2155911” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Ashok Cherian, CIO, JK Cement[/caption] “The digital and print media leverages it fully and fans enjoy this bundle of facts too. The analytics driven trends and statistics which come up regularly on our TV screen actually dominates the mood of the typical fan. Earlier, all of us would bank on our own limited knowledge and reactions were just instantaneous.” Not just cricket, analytics has huge potential in sports on the whole. One of the key benefits is that it helps teams understand their opponents in much better by discovering their weakness, traits, strengths and trends, and ultimately build their strategy based on facts and not on perceptions, Cherian notes. “While talent will always shine, the analytical angle is going to be a great asset in understanding own weakness and opportunities through internalizing data crunching analytics,” he argues. Analytics also opens up a floodgate of opportunities for sports management. Cherian elaborates by saying, “It starts right from leverage decisions of team selection, fine tuning custom strategies against different rival teams in addition to keeping continuous improvement going. IPL teams have already started leveraging technology and analytics which is spreading widely across other sports as well as it helps them manage the team more professionally and fact based.” As a fan, Cherian does have an interesting take on the cricket with analytics cocktail. But how does he look at analytics as a CIO of a large enterprise? He replies, “We have adopted analytics in a major way.A greater sense of realization today exists in our leadership on the need to leverage analytics for maintaining business differentiation. J K Cement as well as the industry as a whole does understand the need to provide better customer experience and this is pushing everyone to analytics.” “Analytics is bound to help in improving efficiencies by creating and effectively executing strategies. The operational as well as strategic leg up that analytics provides will not only transform the industry and its players but also help the larger customer and investor base in fulfilling their demands.” Cherian also feels that both social sentiment and predictive analysis is all set to unleash the next wave of analytics opportunities. In today’s world, where the social media rules, understanding the pulse of your customers and stakeholders is extremely critical. A missed sentiment can create havoc and a well-read sentiment can bring in fortunes. So, he firmly believes social sentiment analytics is going to be a key component going forward. An increasing realization is setting in on the current level of insights traditional analytics can provide and the focus is clearly spreading to predictive analysis. And, he believes that every corporate entity needs predictive analysis and we will see more and more deployments which will leverage the past data, mix it with trends within and the industry to bring about valuable predictive analysis. But, is there a need to give the power of analytics in the hands of top management? On this, Cherian views data visualisation and dashboards playing crucial role in business decision-making process. “What the top management needs is graphical representation without going through too many numbers but at the same time revealing the hidden story in just one look. Dashboards have helped us in providing intuitive formats and layouts. The power of data warehousing has been punched with smart graphical presentation options which has helped us much in establishing a swift decision support environment helping the top management,” he concludes.