While only the most severely deluded spectator thinks they could do a better job out on the field than the professionals, all of us have surely at some point reckoned we could run a team more successfully than the coach.

We sit in the press box, the stands or the sofa and demand to know why the hell so-and-so is bowling it there, or wonder aloud that, surely, the only explanation this guy keeps getting picked is because he’s got incriminating Polaroids of the selectors.

It was never really a testable theory for the enthusiast until recent years: but in cricket, the explosion of the T20 format, the availability of performance data, domestic teams’ scrambles to get any edge and a more connected world have given three cricket journalists the opportunity to see if they could translate press box opinions into actual sporting results.

Freddie Wilde of data service CricViz is working with T20 coaching great Tom Moody at The Oval on behalf of the London Hundred Franchise; Hassan Cheema is an analyst and strategy manager of Pakistan Super League side Islamabad United; and Jarrod Kimber has been the general manager of St Lucia in the Caribbean Premier League and is currently working with the Scotland national side.

All three are cricket writers and journalists who have now crossed the divide. Journalists have an advantage over the purely bedroom enthusiast in that they might have some existing connections. For Wilde - whose CricViz firm was set up by Nathan Leamon, former analyst for the England team - informal arrangements with the Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Melbourne Renegades have led him further into the dressing room inner sanctum, to the extent of advising Moody on recruitment for this summer’s new English tournament.

He is able to use insights from watching as a journalist to build data models that identify talent. “Cricket has obviously always had stats but with T20 you particularly need context for the stats and what phase of the game they are: death, middle overs, powerplay," Wilde says.

"For instance with The Hundred, when we are looking at recruitment you would rate strike-rate more highly than wicket preservation, because the innings is 20 balls shorter.” The T20 analyst has two discrete roles: helping players and coaches tactically and guiding the franchises in player acquisition via the drafts that are now common worldwide.

Cheema had worked as an engineer and then as a writer for CricInfo; he also wrote about numbers, mainly in Pakistan domestic cricket. “I was frustrated by Pakistan cricket, and by the cricket media, but you can’t just walk into the PCB and tell them what to do, can you? But then when the PSL started up, the teams were seeking analysts. The Islamabad ownership group were talking Moneyball [the concept pioneered in baseball where players are picked on a sabermetric approach]."

As an outsider, Cheema knew he needed to get some recruitment wins under his belt early on. “Shadab Khan was one we picked in 2016 before the second season of the PSL. He wasn’t really rated by the Pakistan cricket fraternity but his numbers in under-19 cricket were excellent. Being outside the bubble of cricket helps here because you have a more neutral perspective. We earmarked him, we got him, we invested in him and he is now our captain.”