The world cup got off to a flier today, with Australian and Kiwi batsmen treating us to a masterclass.

As a data nerd, this got me thinking – could we use data to guess at which batsmen would perform the best in the world cup? Here is a brief stab at it.

Methodology

To identify the best batsmen, we created an ODI Impact Index for every batsmen in the world, based on their performance in the past 12 months. This ODI Impact Index was created by taking the product of the average runs scored by a batsman in an inning and their strike rate, normalized for the quality of the opposition they played against (as determined by their current ICC ranking). Only batsmen that played atleast 300 balls were considered, and not-outs were ignored in the calculation of averages.

Results

The results were interesting. Here are the 10 most impactful batsmen of the past year:

As expected, AB de Villiers takes the top spot. Rohit Sharma’s recent good form sees him at second spot, while Virat Kohli’s indifferent form against England and Australia sees him far below someone of his caliber should be. Interestingly, Luke Ronchi and Kane Williamson seem to have flown a bit under the radar despite their form over the past year. Luke Ronchi, in particular, is a very interesting batsman. He rarely gets large scores (usually batting at number 6 or 7), but consistently scores at a rapid pace.

However, if one looks at the consistency of batsman (defined at the inverse of the covariance of runs scored in an innings), a slightly different picture begins to emerge.

The contrast between Rohit Sharma and Kane Williamson is especially interesting. Both batsmen have a high impact, but Kane Williamson is significantly more consistent than Rohit Sharma. This graph also shows us how special a batsman AB de Villers is, with an exceptionally high impact as well as consistency.

If we only take games in Australia & New Zealand into account, however, the picture changes significantly.

AB de Villers is absolutely off the chart in this comparison, while Indian batsmen significantly underperform. Virat Kohli, one of the best performers in the aggregate chart, becomes one of the worst performers in Australia & New Zealand. The only Indian batsman who has performed well in these conditions has been Rohit Sharma. But since he has only played 2 innings, he was not plotted on the chart above.

The Bottom Line

While Australia is one of the most prominent favourites for the tournament, expect New Zealand to go far as well. Kane Williamson, Luke Ronchi and Ross Taylor have been performing consistently well over the past year, and Corey Anderson and Brendon McCullum are players who can single-handedly win a match on their day. At the same time, bowling department is relatively competent (more on that in the next post).

Expect South Africa to do well too. With AB de Villers doing what he does, and Hashim Amla playing well, they have a decent shot at the tournament (especially given their intriguing bowling attack – more on that in our next post).

Don’t expect too much from the sub-continental teams. While their big names ensure that they can never be taken lightly, their record in Australia and NZ has been atrocious over the past year. In particular, for India to have any chance of winning, they need to become more comfortable with bouncy pitches (more on that in our subsequent posts) and improve their atrocious bowling attack.