Doesn't BCCI deserve some credit?

Indian media has a favorite whipping boy in the form of the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) - which is almost always depicted as a body full of political squabbles or even worse, a bumbling but powerful idiot with the huge might of the Indian market at its disposal. BCCI is portrayed as a reactive body - I understand the hope that BCCI be proactive, but honestly, how many sports bodies in India are reactive at least? Also, the media does not appreciate enough, how BCCI brought in big money into cricket over the years; true, it capitalized on the success of the Indian cricket team in 1983, but again, how many sports bodies have been able to capitalize on the successes of their wards?

This post, though, is not about how BCCI has got the short shrift from the media in general. I stick to the specific instance of team selection for the inaugural Twenty20 world cup. These days, cricket is analyzed so much (especially the off-the-field shenanigans) by the media that I find this omission about the BCCI's good management of team selection glaring. First things first, though - this Twenty20 world cup has 12 teams participating, of which, eight teams, have been around for long enough on the international scene as more-or-less permanent fixtures in both the longer (Tests) and shorter (ODIs) versions of the game. Of these eight teams, Australia has been rebuilding in the spate of retirements of players post-Ashes glory and it was clear that their Twenty20 team will not hold any surprises. England had lot of experience in the shortest version of the game through several Twenty20 matches played between its counties and hence, picking up a team was not very difficult. Of the remaining six teams, New Zealand and West Indies do not command the same market power as the other teams, and as such, their Twenty20 teams were not expected to evoke much reaction from the media.

The remaining four teams had interesting pasts recently - Sri Lanka did well in the 2007 ODI World Cup; South Africa did alright but could not get rid of its chokers tag; India and Pakistan did badly. Once the teams for Twenty20 for these four countries had been made public, lot of controversy got generated except in the case of Indian team. The selection committees of these four teams probably wanted younger players, but the way they went about it was very different. In the case of South Africa, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, players such as Kallis, Yousuf and Atapattu were not considered and this had repercussions including these names being linked to the Indian Cricket league (ICL) that is to kick-off shortly in defiance to BCCI. In the case of India, the trio of Sachin, Sourav and Rahul made themselves unavailable for selection, leaving a free hand to the selectors. However, Sourav's statements later on seemed to clearly indicate that the trio has been persuaded by the BCCI behind the scenes - leading to graceful exit of the trio and a free hand to BCCI. More importantly, the trio seemed to have been taken in confidence very well - unlike in the case of the players in other teams, they did not sulk - the performances of Sachin and Sourav especially reminiscent of their halcyon days. Given that the media generally castigates BCCI for mismanagement, shouldn't it have doffed its hat to BCCI on this occasion for its good man management? I don't recall seeing any such article or analysis in the media - or is it possible that I missed such an analysis due to information overload? I can dismiss that possibility given the brush that media uses to portray BCCI generally. Which brings me back to the question, doesn't BCCI deserve some credit? and more importantly, perhaps, why is it that Indian media fails to see positives?

Aside 1: One of the supporters of ICL took a very interesting dig at the name of BCCI, saying that BCCI is only interested in the "control" of cricket, and not its "development" and hence, it is opposed to ICL.

Aside 2: That India has defeated South Korea 7-2 in the men's Asia Cup hockey tournament, coupled with the success of the film "ChakDe! India" could potentially mean that any slip-ups by the Indian cricket team in the inaugural Twenty20 world cup would lead to increased interest in hockey. While I do wish that we do well in Twenty 20, the Indian men's hockey team deserves all the attention it can get especially after that victory margin despite playing with only 10 men for better part of the game.

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Super Crunchers

People say that I have a good analytical mind; while I was always afraid of numbers, these people claim that I only feign fear. As a researcher, my creed has been of a qualitative persuasion. Friends take a dig at me as I argue that reality is socially constructed; I typically return the favor by saying that such socially constructed reality is statistically validated by the likes of my friends. I had, in the process of working on my morbid fear of numbers, undergone an internship with the analytics center of excellence in GE (GE-ACOE), Bangalore which later became a part of GECIS and is now a part of GENPACT. While I appreciated the way analytics were used to harness the power of numbers, I never really understood the import. Later on, the analytics industry grew and many people, including one of my good friends did their bit in evangelizing the analytics industry. Despite this, I failed to fully grasp the increasing importance of numbers in our life, till I read Super Crunchers.

Super Crunchers: Why thinking-by-numbers is the new way to be smart is an interesting book because its author Ian Ayres is primarily a law professor, and as such, he makes the book engaging by dealing in the applications of number crunching while keeping the math light at the same time. The book has a wide variety of interesting & informative illustrations with jargon reduced to a minimum. The technique dealt with primarily is that of randomization – the most interesting was the (unintended) experiment of reserving one-third seats of Panchayat heads in India to women, which led to establishing the difference in priorities of men and women heading villages. Indeed, the title of the book itself is a product of randomization, as Ayres tested at least 2 titles and 2 sub-titles before zeroing down on the present combination – surely one of the rare cases where an academician practices what he preaches? What is interesting is how he establishes the increasing feasibility of super crunching – thanks to advances in ICTs, the cost of setting up, data collection & analysis of large-scale randomization experiments has become simpler, faster and cheaper, leading to what he calls, a tad dramatically, “the end of intuition.” However, he does not elaborate on the negative effects of randomization – for example, large sample testing can have destructive effects, akin to testing the matches in a match box which become useless once tested. Also, intuition is still needed to decide on what to randomize. While Ayres argues that randomization cannot be used on once-in-a-while events like space shuttle launches, I was wondering if simulation, in combination with randomization, can help solve such problems. He also looks at regression and its applications in some depth in earlier chapters before moving on to introduce Bayes’ theorem and the 2SD rule (I never realized that the error margin indicated in polls is equal to two standard deviations) in the last chapter in an insightful yet enchanting manner. He delves into esoteric stuff such as neural networks and the counterintuitive strategy of limiting their number for achieving better results – taking me back to the time I learnt on a different conception of bounded rationality. Ayres looks to pause at the flipside too – the problems of errors in super crunching and the problems of reporters not understanding statistics; on the latter, he gives the example of Lawrence Summers’ statements being perceived as gender-insensitive and politically incorrect despite being statistically correct (Summers had to step down as Harvard president after the furor on the media coverage).

What I liked about the book was the flow in terms of how each seemingly disparate example seamlessly led to another, helping build arguments. Given the focus of the book, Ian did not dwell much on peripheral themes that I could glean (the much bigger role of government vis-à-vis private interests in randomization experiments; the increasing importance of number crunching in medicine, a theme touched upon in Malcolm Gladwell’s delightful Blink as well). He also does not explore some of the issues that stare you in the face as you read the book. He does not talk about the possibility of gaming behavior possible due to the results obtained through super crunching – when everyone starts engaging in such behavior, super crunching becomes a hygiene factor (a la “Does IT matter?” by Nicholas Carr); to me, the advantages of super crunching clearly lie in understanding (natural) systems that cannot be gamed. Despite these minor oversights on the part of the author, I really loved the book because it not only made me think but also made me feel as if I was in love with numbers!

Aside 1: I’d love to test which of these phrases is more effective using randomization: "100% improvement" or "increased by 2 times ."
Aside 2: I’d also like to write a sci-fi story on Super Crunching producing conformists.

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