Mastering the art of Cricket Strategy with CricInsights

Captains And Teams That Master The Art Of Cricket Strategy, Tactics And Cricinsights Are Unstoppable!

glimpse from the match of Aus vs. Pak in the T20 world cup

Plotting cricket strategy and building smart tactics is no more a good-to-have idea but a must-have plan. Why?

Because, unlike yester years, cricket has become as much of a mental game as a physical one.

Cricket matches are a combination of pre-match planning and live-action execution.

Experienced cricketers invest time before the match, analyze different aspects of the game, and execute a well-thought-out plan with minor amends when needed.

But cricket match analysis isn’t as simple as it sounds. It comes with the endless crunching of data and numbers–analyzing the past, and predicting the future.

Well, the hard part is almost over! CricHeroes’ cricket analysis and strategy recommendations are as effortless as M.S. Dhoni’s helicopter shot.

 

Did you know, CricHeroes is capable of producing pre-match, post-match and live-match insights?

Why do cricketers need cricket strategy and tactics?

In the semifinal of the T20 World Cup in the UAE, Australian leg-spinner Adam Zampa delivered

between the 7th and 16th over to counter Pakistan’s spin-expert batters. Pakistani right-hand batters Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan dragged Pakistan to 47 runs off 6 overs, Zampa made a needful entry immediately after the PowerPlay and delivered two overs between 7 and 10.

Zampa ensured Babar couldn’t take off keeping a tight line and length; ultimately taking his wicket. Zampa completed his stint with 1 for 22; with an impressive economy rate of 5.50 in a match where other teammates maintained a rate over 6.

How do you think the Australian team decided the bowling lineup against Pakistan?

The choice of bowler at the right time comes not only with experience but also studying the opponent team before a match.

For instance, in your next cricket match imagine having the CricHeroes’ tournament insights handy. By having a complete batting and bowling scorecard (with granular details) can put you and your team in a better position.

Cricket strategy and tactics are meant to keep you in control by helping:

• Take data-backed decisions over intuitions.
• Make quick amends faster in a live match.
• Change bowling or batting order faster

On CricHeroes app, you can get upcoming match insights– analyse the opponent team and create a winning strategy before your match.

What is the difference between a Cricket Strategy & Cricket Tactics?

A cricket strategy is a plan with a long-term end goal in mind. For instance, acing a tri-series or gearing up for a strong opponent for an individual match. The concept of a match-up is a common strategy in T20 matches.

A cricket tactic is usually a list of actions that one can take immediately in a match. Tactics are doable actions, resources, and skills deployed to win a match. For instance, executing a match-up needs a bowling lineup against a set of strong batters.

Generally, a cricket strategy is created at the following levels:

• Team Strategy
• Player Strategy
• Sub Team (for example the bowling or batting unit)

Tactics are a different set of action plans (a subset of the strategies) created in three different units of cricket:

1. Batting
2. Bowling
3. Fielding

Also, the cricket strategy and the win-or-loss debate starts with the toss. Winning a match can also mean winning the toss and taking dibs at fielding or batting. Almost every skipper wants to win the toss but a plan B is built to work in a situation when the team loses the toss.

With CricHeroes’ help, it will be easier to make such critical decisions:

• Should our team bat first after winning the toss?
• Who are the manageable bowlers?
• Who are our top batters?

Now let’s understand what are the best match-winning cricket strategies.

What is the cricket bowling strategy?

The bowling team takes into account a couple of concrete objectives that the team needs to accomplish.

• The first and most logical objective is to take wickets. The best batter sent first needs to be taken down quickly to make room for less confident and average batters-ensuring low confidence of the batting team.
• The next objective is to restrict the batting team from scoring runs. This is determined by tracking the economy rate of the bowler. Keeping the economy rate below 3 or 4 an over is a good shot to keep the batting team at bay.
• The final objective is an indirect way to reduce excess runs- limit the wides and no balls. The bowlers must bowl for a set of overs in a required time frame. Similar to the economy rate, failure to abide by the over rate invites a monetary penalty determined by the umpire.

Based on the objectives the bowling team needs to devise a strategy to take down the batting side:

• Bowling should be in a tight line and length.
• The perfect line is to pitch the ball outside the off stump, ensuring the ball passes between the batter’s bat and body. (Remember, an ideal length ball will bounce up to around the batsman’s waist level.)
• Normally, the pace bowlers are sent at the start of the innings to take down the expert batters of the opponent team. They usually cover the first 10 overs in an ODI match and around 2 hours in test cricket.
• Another strategic decision to send pace bowlers, in the beginning, is to leverage the hard and smooth ball that passes quickly through the air and bounces off the pitch and offers lesser spin.

Whether you are a batter or bowler, how do you perform compared to players on your team and the opposition?

What is the cricket batting order strategy?

The captain and the coach need to pull all their mental strength together to build the right batting order. Pretty similar to what you see here.

 

Batting order lineup means selecting the right candidates for;

• Opening batter– Those who’ll open the match, but may not be the best batter.
• Top-order batter– Generally enter the field at the 3rd or 5th number.
• Middle-order batter– 6th to 8th is the middle-order position.
• Tail enders– batter who start at 9th or sometimes 8th order.

The lineup is closely demarcated based on technique, skills ( grip,back-lift, and stance), ball condition, temperament, and bowlers expected. Every individual in a lineup is sent with a planned objective in mind. The same stats are applied when the lineup changes mid-match.

For instance, Sourav Ganguly and Shane Watson are known as opening specialists. They were exceptional at facing a new ball that swings more.

What is the cricket fielding strategy?

If you closely look at the wagon wheel on the CricHeroes app, You’ll be able to track the strokes played by a batter. Different colours on the wheel denote boundaries and singles scored by the batters.

Fielding restricts the extra runs the batting team can score. A fielder can limit runs by using all their might to stop the ball, secure a catch in flight or run out the striker or non-striker. To achieve these enormously important results the field setup is planned, equally considering the past performance of the batsman.

Fielding positions are categorised based on the sides of the field-offside and legside. Apart from the bowler and wicketkeeper, the other 9 players occupy different field positions. The tactical positions are designated by the captain keeping the team in confidence.

The fielding position of right-handed batter and left-handed batter will vary. For a right-hander, the left side of the field is leg-side or onside. For left-hand batter, the leg or offsides are reversed.

With that, we discussed the basic cricket strategy-building ideas. We don’t want to sound too pushy but cannot stress enough on the need for resorting to data and insights for an accurate match-winning cricket strategy.

We’d love to know how difficult it is to build cricket strategies and tactics for a match without taking help from data-backed insights(such as on CricHeroes)?

Do share your challenges in the comment section!

FAQs

• Can CricHeroes Pro help compare in all aspects of the game?

Yes, you can compare players by selecting and comparing their stats on the app.

• Can I compare teams on CricHeroes Pro?

Similar to players, team insights can be compared on the app.

• Can I know my strengths and weaknesses as a bowler and batter?

Yes, the batting and bowling insights are quite advanced and help in generating a true picture of your cricket capabilities.

• Along with live match insights, is live streaming also available?

Yes, both live streaming and live match insights are available.