Cricket is a bat-and-ball game. It is played between two teams, each team
consisting of 11 players. In limited-overs cricket, the teams play for a fixed number
of overs, usually 50 or 20. At the end of the match, the team which scores the most
number of runs in those limited-overs win the match. In this paper, taking the data
from ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, an attempt is made to identify the type of
competition that exists between the players, i.e., batsmen and bowlers using the
Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). This index is a statistical device used for
estimating the degree of concentration in a particular market. A team is said to have
the monopoly in scoring runs if the bulk of their scoring in the tournament is done by
a few batsmen only while the other batsmen made an insignificant contribution with
the bat. Likewise, a team is said to have bowler's monopoly, if the majority of wickets
is taken by few bowlers of the team while the other bowlers could dismiss an
insignificant number of opponent batsmen in the tournament. Applying bootstrap
sampling, the teams are classified into three groups viz. monopoly, moderately
competitive, and perfectly competitive. From the analysis, it is found that India,
Australia, Bangladesh, and New Zealand are the teams where a monopoly exists, i.e.,
most numbers of runs are scored by two or three batsmen. All other teams except
Pakistan, i.e., Afghanistan, West Indies, Sri Lanka, South Africa, England, are
categorized as having perfect competition in the task of run-scoring. On the other
hand, in the case of bowlers, Australia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh enjoys
monopolistic nature in bowling. All other teams such as India, New Zealand, West
Indies, Afghanistan, South Africa, and England are categorized as having Perfect
Competition in the task of taking wickets. The study finds that out of the four semifinalists,
three of the teams enjoy a monopoly of batsmen, and three teams enjoy the
perfect competition of bowlers. Thus, the work concludes that the monopoly of
batsmen in a cricket team and perfect competition amongst bowlers have a role to play
in the performance of teams in the tournament.
Keywords: Bootstrapping, Cricket, Cricket analytics, HHI, ICC cricket world cup,
monopoly.
