The Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 campaign had to end prematurely with Covid-19 infecting even those inside the bio-bubble set up by the franchises. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI)’s decision to suspend the remainder of the season left the fans of Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) hurt as the franchise was putting in one of its finest performances in the tournament.
Though the BCCI is hopeful of seeing the T20 league reaching its conclusion, an enthusiastic IPL fan decided to simulate the remainder of the season to see who would come out on top. The simulation was done by a Reddit user named Adish Jain using the programming language, Python.
The simulation was done putting into account all factors like pitches, match-ups, recent form, the record of players as well as teams. The matches were then simulated ball-by-ball.
“I made a Python program to simulate an entire season of the IPL (excluding the playoffs) using past data, predictive analysis, and randomization techniques. I mainly wanted to share this because there are some really interesting scenarios in the scorecards or some epic batting collapses, also I think RCB fans will like this one,” he wrote on Redditt.
Speaking to Wisden, Jain explained the process he followed to create the simulator.
“I extracted each player’s past five years’ data for batsmen and bowlers. What kind of runs a batsman scored – singles, doubles, fours or sixes – what kind of runs the bowlers leaked, against what bowling did a batsman thrive, when they scored their runs – powerplay, middle overs or death – what mode of dismissal bowlers dismissed batsmen the most with and vice-versa how batsmen got out. This includes detailed data such as frequency of wides or no balls or the average catches taken by a player in a game,” he said.
