Real cricket action happens off the ground with analytics: Satish Pendse from Highbar Tech

Analytics, and the insights therein, has become an integral part of the enterprise. Firstpost takes a look into an unlikely application of analytics – in the world of sports. As the ICC World Cup fever grips the nation, we catch up with a well-known and a cricket-loving CIO Satish Pendse, who is currently the president of Highbar Technologies Ltd, an HCC group company, to understand how he sees cricket today with technology impacting the viewing experience. FP: How does insightful information delivered through excellent data visualisation help you appreciate and understand cricket better? Pendse: Analytics has now become integral part of cricket, one wonders how we were watching cricket in 80’s when the analytics was too elementary! The use of analytics in cricket is improving every year. Between two successive world-cup tournaments (2011–2015), the use of analytics has gone up by at least 50 percent. IPL matches too, exploit the power of analytics extremely well. Viewers today enjoy cricket more with elaborate analysis of player performance and predictions that technology has made possible. [caption id=“attachment_2150167” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Satish Pendse, president, Highbar Technologies[/caption] Before the match begins, there is series of analysis, about the pitch, weather conditions, weather predictions, history of two teams against each other, history of the teams on the particular ground, in the particular country, among others . Similarly, each player of the teams gets analyzed in great details, in terms of his records, his performance against the opponent, on the pitch, his strengths and weaknesses. Each player is also analyzed as a fielder in terms of the history of his catches taken or dropped. Strategies of captain get predicted and its possible impacts are discussed. The list is just endless. Cricket is no longer only the game to be played on the ground. Much of it happens off the ground, using analytical tools. The moment the player enters the ground for batting, the analytic tools start displaying a variety of statistics. During the game the bowler is analyzed to suggest which types of balls have given him more success or which type of his balls are not being played well by the batsman. With every significant event on the ground (half century, century, long six, catch taken, catch dropped, wide ball, no ball, etc.), there is some analytics that follows. Frame-by-frame analysis of run-outs, the most difficult catch of the match, the analysis of pace of each ball in the over and its impact on the batsman etc. has made watching cricket great fun. Another interesting aspect is the post-match analytics. Not just the numbers, we can see pictorial and video representations of facts.Overall, watching cricket has now become far more enriching, engaging and thought provoking with the inclusion of analytics. FP: Do you see a great use of analytics in fields like sports which were once just about mere ability and talent? Do you see this levelling the playing field for sportspeople so that even those not extremely talented can use these insights to work on specific areas?  Pendse: Definitely. Every sport now uses analytics to a great extent. Analytics is used in individual games like athletics, swimming, cycling, car racing. and also in team games like cricket or football. Tournaments like Olympics, Asian games, Formula One, World cup football, world cup cricket bear testimony to use of analytics. Every player, every coach, every team uses it to strengthen themselves, understand the weak links of opposition, study the climate and ground conditions and thereafter to calibrate winning strategies. Sports is no longer only about ability and talent; it’s now also about analytics and well drawn-out strategies with meticulous execution. Analytics has added to overall increased professionalism in the sports. Talent and ability have their own importance in sports and analytics definitely cannot replace that. At the same time, analytics can definitely make a sportsperson analyze themselves, analyze the experts, find out areas in which they lack and then work on them. For example, the swimmer can analyze his timings using different angles, different styles of swimming and study how the experts achieve better timings using which styles, which angles or their breathing patterns. He can then practice the winning patterns of experts and keep on analyzing self improvements using the changes made. The cricket spin bowler can analyze which angle of hand, position of fingers, patterns of holding ball gives him better turn and greater accuracy. He can do similar analysis of the world best spinners and devise changes for himself. Making up for the lacuna in talent, he can go closer to the expert in performance, just by using better analytics and improving oneself accordingly! Indian mythology talks about Ekalavya gaining expertise in archery all by himself. The modern Ekalavyas will get much better equipped with use of analytics, despite not having the resources to hire best of the coaches. FP: How do analytics help improve sports management and ensure that while sports is fun, it can be good business for owners and others and thus widen its reach and scope. Pendse: IPL is the best example of how analytics helps the sports management. Before the auctions, the videos and records of each and every player are studied by the owner / management to decide which player to bid for, the right pick-up priceand so on. Even the possible team composition is analyzed before the auction to identify which set of team they should aim at for maximizing the performance. Rajasthan Royals have won a couple of times in the IPLs and both the times they had spent the least at the time of auction. They also worked with players who were not ‘star players’ but managed to win tournament twice, nonetheless. I am sure they have used analytics much better before the auction as well as during the tournament. Analytics has also helped the sports management of Formula 1 races, WWE, football, golf in a similar fashion. Gaming industry is yet another example how analytics has helped the game owners to track the performance of players and monetize the game at one of the most appropriate times in the players playing time. The analytics also helps to get better advertisement revenue, which helps the owners get better returns. FP: How do you see analytics transforming your industry and company? Pendse: I represent the Infrastructure, Real Estate and Construction industry. The business involves execution of large projects (Rs 300–3000 crore or even larger), executed over 3-7 years. The projects are won through competitive bidding and hence the margins are very thin. The scope for errors is therefore extremely limited. The project has many uncertainties. One bad project of this magnitude can have a substantial negative impact on an organization. Project planning is therefore extremely important. Analytics is used for the same. What-if analysis by varying different resources, varying the timings of each activity, varying the futuristic projections of pricing, etc., the impact on project is studied. This helps to develop optimum project plan. Earlier this kind of analysis was done only by expert planners based on their past experience and expertise. However availability of various analytical tools now makes it possible for less experienced planning manager to also achieve the level of perfection as that of an expert. The life cycle of projects is 3-5-7 years. At a periodic interval, one needs to check how the project compares with the plan. One needs to calculate Estimated-Cost-to-Completion, based on current state and the portion remaining. This calls for analytics and is extremely crucial to ensure that project remains on track and organization ends up achieving desired margin at the end of the project. One also needs to analyze the project vis-à-vis the similar projects of ours or of the competition and compare them on various parameters to find out areas of improvement. Various C-level executives (CEO, CFO, COO, CSO etc.) need to have dashboards giving them an idea of how the performance of the organization is vis-à-vis their KPI’s. FP: What do you see as use cases for social sentiment analysis and predictive analysis Pendse: During Lok Sabha elections, the winning party BJP leveraged the potential of Social Media, analytics and mobility to its fullest. They have done social sentiment analysis by capturing the sentiments on various social media as well as by having their teams in connect with the constituencies and feeding the data back to central cell. They have even used predictions based on this sentiment analysis to understand “sure win” as well as “weak zones to be focused” and planned their strategies accordingly. Zynga.com is online gaming portal which makes people purchase online after reaching the peak of the game sentiments of the player who is addictive to the game. His sentiments are appropriately analyzed and converted intelligently to help monetization. Gojiyo.com by Godrej, is derived from second life game. This is currently working. Gojiyo has integrated various products as part of the games to be played on gojiyo.com to create top of mind recall for products. It’s a good example of businesses using the sentiment analysis to strengthen the brand recall.  FP: How does data visualisation and dashboards help your top management? Pendse: We have dashboards that capture data from back-end ERP, CRM and such other applications to give a pictorial representation of the KPI’s of top management. The pi-charts, bar-charts, tables, graphs, drill down facilities, intuitive color codes make it easier and quite intuitive for the top management member to be able to analyze the performance of various KPIs and take necessary corrective action. Earlier they were dependant more on the experience and personal meetings etc. Now the analytics visuals give them much faster and almost real time control of the KPIs so that they can spend more time on making required corrections. Their actions are more timely and focused, so its favorable impact on business can be optimized.