Weathering the game: A comprehensive study of weather impact on ODI cricket

Abstract

The game of cricket is one of the most popular team games. Its influence continues globally, with efforts by the International Cricket Council (ICC) to expand the game to other regions and make it more inclusive beyond the commonwealth countries. Weather has become an integral part of cricket because the game is played outdoors, and the weather can impact the game in many ways. Though there are numerous cricket-related studies in the literature, there is a shortage of research work focusing on the impact of the weather on the game. This study considers one-day international cricket games played during the last decade and conducts an in-depth analysis to quantify the impact of weather-related factors on batting and bowling. Furthermore, we extend the analysis to explore weather-prone cricket venues, and at the end, we accurately predict the result of a weather-affected game. According to the experimental outcomes, the nature of the weather (clear, overcast, rainy, sunny) and some of the weather–related parameters such as temperature, heat index, humidity, dewpoint, precipitation, win-speed, pressure, and the amount of light significantly impact both batting and bowling at various stages of the game. When predicting the winner of the weather-affected game, the Bagging model can predict the winner with an accuracy of 79%, recall value of 84%, and precision of 76%.