The technical and tactical effectiveness of T20 teams

Abstract

The study investigated the technical and tactical effectiveness of Twenty20 (T20) teams during the 2012 T20 World Cup held in Sri Lanka, looking to compare successful and unsuccessful teams. In total, data from 25 International T20 games data were collected using a computerised data gathering system called NxCricket, with a total of 41 key performance variables being collected. Intially, the study conducted an intra-reliability test and, after a Kappa analysis, it was deemed the system was reliable. SPSS was used to conduct a Mann Whitney U test on each of the performance variables, looking to identify any significant (p<0.01) differences between successful and unsuccessful teams. In total, 15 out of the 41 performance variables collected, were classed as being significant (p<0.01). These were total runs, total wickets, powerplay runs, powerplay boundaries, powerplay wickets lost, run rate, dot balls, fours, sixes, scored shot percentage, covers, wickets taken seam, wickets taken spin, caught and stumped. The study concluded that taking more wickets during powerplays and throughout the innings is a vital part of being a successful team in T20, along with getting more of your wickets through catches and stumping’s. The study’s findings also identified the importance of successful teams scoring more of their runs through boundaries, especially during the powerplays when there are fielding restrictions.