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Excellence by Organization

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Mon, 2012-09-03 22:57 — shreyas



Story Link:
Link1: http://blogs.espncricinfo.com/itfigures/archives/2012/09/test_wicketkeep...
Link3: http://lordsofcricket.com/media/Cricket_Game_Sheet_.pdf
Link2: http://brijux.com/2009/09/12/harsha-bhogle-achievers-of-excellence-iim-a...

[Link1] I am an avid cricket follower and this study came out recently which allowed for comparison of specialist players not just contemporary but across generations. I had not realized this was such a daunting task until the i202 course where I realized that this was possible because of diligently stored scoresheets (data storage) and then retrieved for a variety of queries. Cricket differs from many other sports because since it goes on for sometimes up to 5 days the data collection and retrieval also has to be done over 5 days. And there are a variety of relevant information in cricket which involves individual and team scores as well as ball-by-ball data collection. And I think many other sports also have a huge Information organization and retrieval problem statement. Baseball seems to belong to this category. Also, the information organization and retrieval problem statement in both cricket and baseball differ markedly from some other games like soccer where the critical information is just the team score.

[Link2] So, to really understand the problem better, I retraced my steps back to their database management systems - scoresheets. The link refers to the cricket scoresheet because that is what I understand right now. It was eye opening to understand the sheet from terms of information organization and retrieval concepts. Because although only 1 ball is bowled and certain runs made (between 1-6), each is entered in multiple places on the sheet with other variables to record the data so that the scoresheet could be used for various queries, team based or individual. And this data collected over long time with consistency is what enables sports statisticians to develop such analyses as above.

[Link3] This link isn't related to the story above but the above understanding (with i202 inferences) made me see the same video that I had seen a couple of times earlier in a new light. Harsha Bhogle is one of India's foremost commentators in Indian cricket fraternity but his influence reaches beyond just cricket. He has given a series of inspirational talks about 'learnings from sport'.
The above video made me see the problem of achieving excellence in another light, to that of achieving excellence via organization. In the first video (part1 at 33 mins) Harsha talks about being inspired by his video technicians who had to organize and retrieve the video tapes on a minute by minute basis during live broadcast. In those days, before digital disks, each tape and keyframes had to be logged manually by hand so it could be accessed during or after a broadcast. And so it was phenomenal that without the technology of disks at that time, they were still able to put up great shows just by organizing diligence. The act of organization itself becomes a technology.