Team Selection Strategy in IPL 9 using Random Forests Algorithm

Abstract

IPL 9 is scheduled to be held in April 2016. T20 cricket is relatively new and the strategies and techniques are evolving. This is evident in the better performances by both bowlers and batsmen in successive IPL seasons. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the data of IPL upto season 8 and overall T20 career data of players upto January 2016 to design performance indices for batsmen and bowlers in IPL 9. Categorization of players is done based on their roles in the team and the indices are determined separately for each category using Random Forests Algorithm. A heuristic is designed to enable selection of the best playing 11 out of the available team using the performance indices designed in this work. The algorithm is effective in enabling the best 11 to be selected within the constraints of the rules in the IPL tournament.