Measuring Fielding Performance in Cricket

Introduction. In cricket, the evaluation of individual player performance has been based on measures such as batting and bowling averages. These statistics are used to quantify the batting and bowling performance of cricketers, but there are no statistics for measuring the performance of fielders. This paper introduces a measure that can be used to assess the fielding performance of cricketers. Method. Various factors that are considered important in fielding are quantified to scores based on the ball-by-ball information of a match for each cricketer. The fielding points of each ball are then combined to calculate the total fielding points of a cricketer in a given match. All the fielding points are then added in order to obtain total fielding points of a cricketer up to a given match. Average fielding points are obtained by dividing the total fielding score by the number of matches played. Data. To demonstrate these measures, the first ODI match of India against Zimbabwe played on 11th June, 2016, is examined. Conclusion. The recommended measures can be used to quantify the fielding performances of cricketers for a series of matches, whether it is ODI or Twenty20 cricket. They make it possible to assess the average fielding performance of each player. Individual fielding performance scores can then be aggregated to measure the overall fielding performance of a team.