Date: 18th July, 2009

The core team of HoldingWilley is missing in action as they're in Oxford this week to present their new device Impact Index at the ICC Centenary Conference.

The Impact Index is a new way to judge cricketers. It rejects the innings-oriented aggregate statistics method of judging cricketers - batting and bowling averages, century tallies, wickets tallies, etc. Instead, it focuses on the big picture of Test cricket - the Test matches that in turn make up the Test series, which is the DNA of the game since 1877.

It treats the match as the battle and the series as the war (one innings is then merely a phase in a battle, however significant). This method provides context to the cricketing performance - the state of the match and the series, the strength of the opposition and pitch conditions. And provides a more holistic view of the cricketer's worth in a team context, which should be the most important context of all.

This method has been used to do the most difficult exercise possible with it - a ranking of the 50 most impactful Test cricketers of all nations, all eras, over the last 132 years. This study has taken 5 months to complete and will be released shortly.

Impact Index has even more relevant applications in other forms - like T20 and ODIs.

A pdf snapshot of the Impact Index and a list of the 50 most impactful cricketers of all time is available here.

Linked here are six applications of the Impact Index - exercises we have done where Impact Index has been used to analyze individuals and teams in different formats, tournaments and eras.

To read about the HW's trip to the ICC Centenary Conference and the Impact Index presentation there, click here.

Frontfoot, a New Jersey based cricket radio show, did a live interview with Jaideep for their August 8th episode. Check it out here.

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