Japan Cricket Rating - How did we do it ?

How did we calculate the Rating?

As with every other cricket rating system, you may find many drawbacks here too. We welcome your suggestions and feedbacks to improve this system.

While creating the Rating, we considered the following aspects of the Japan Cricket:

1. Cricket is only a weekend sport played by otherwise employed people, not professionals
2. At times, clubs are unable to field a full eleven
3. Even if they do, there are occasions where it may not be their strongest team, resulting in a lower ranking team defeating a higher ranked team quite often
4. It is difficult glean information about the friendly matches, which, unlike the KCL, are not officially reported anywhere except on the individual club's website

With those constraints in mind, we came up with the following criteria to decide a Performance Index(PI).

Base Table

In order to determine the current ranking, we needed to start from somewhere and the current Performance Index must be based on a previous index.

Simple Performance Index (SPI)

So we set about gathering all the results of the Kanto Cricket League(KCL) - Japan's premier cricket tournament - for the year 2003 and 2004 and created a table based on that. In order to calculate the points, we decided on the following formula:

Win - 2 points
Tie - 1 point

This gave us a Simple Performance Index(SPI). Note that we excluded all friendly tournaments and matches from this base table index.

Tournament Performance Index (TPI)

Now that SPI has been formed, we decided that the teams that perform better than others in a tournament(of 3 teams or more) should be rewarded. So one additional point was awarded to all teams that qualified for the semi-final of the KCL. Likewise, one more additional point was awarded to the teams that qualified for the final of the tournament. For e.g., the Tokyo Giants received 4 additional points for qualifying for the semi-finals and finals of 2003 and 2004 where as the Indian Engineers received 2 additional points for qualifying for the semi-finals of 2003 and 2004. Note that we excluded all friendly tournaments like the Pacific Cup from this index.

Win - 2 points
Tie - 1 point
TPI - 1 point

Objective Performance Index

Now, as it happens in cricket in Japan, the participation of clubs in the KCL depends on the availability of players for that year. For e.g. the Gunma XI Star took part in KCL 2003 but abstained in the subsequent years. So it may not be fair to place them at their current ranking position on the Base Table. The Gunma at its current ranking deserves a place in the third position but since they were not part of KCL during the 2004 base period and the current year(2005), it was decided they don't deserve a place at the top. So we moved all such clubs to the bottom. Let us call such clubs Inactive Clubs. The 6 clubs listed at the bottom of the table below(Table A) belong to this category.

Secondly, we thought it is not fair to judge a club's performance based a limited number of matches. So we adopted a criteria of minimum of 5 matches during this base period to be considered. Those clubs who didn't qualify this criteria were moved down regardless of their performance.

Thirdly, there are three new teams that joined the KCL in 2005. Under normal circumstances they should be listed at the bottom with the lowest ranking, even below the inactive clubs. And we did. However, when we applied the Weighted Performance Index(explained below), we realised that these new clubs enjoyed a huge advantage whenever they defeated a higher ranking team because of the intervening 6 inactive clubs. In order to minimise that, we decided to place them above the inactive clubs. Thus, Tokyo Dragons, Paddy Foleys and Nagoya C.C were given Rank 15, above the clubs that dropped out of the 2005 KCL.

This gave us a pretty good idea of where each team stand and it was decided to use this table for a base ranking. Accordingly, the Base Table was created as shown below:

So the Base Table is now ready to be applied to the current results beginning 2005. 

Weighted Performance Index (WPI)

Now, common sense tells us that the victory of Indian Engineers(Ranked 9) over Tokyo Giants(Ranked 1) should not be be measured in  the scale as their victory over say, Shizuoka Kytes(Ranked 12). So it was decided that whenever a lower ranking team defeats a higher ranking team, that victory must get more weight than the other way. So we decided that in such cases, the lower ranking team will get additional points equal to 0.1 times the ranking difference. For e.g., when the Tokyo Dragons(Ranked 15) defeated Wyverns(Ranked 3) in 2005, the Dragons earned a bonus point of 1.2 (12x0.1).

Since there was no base table available before the Base Table was formed(!), the weighted performance index will be applied only from 2005. The table given below will show you how the current rating is based on the 2005 results as of June 30. Both KCL and all reported friendly match results have been included in this table.

As mentioned above, we also included the reported friendly matches to arrive at this table. The friendly matches reported and included in the table above as of June 30, 2005 are:
Tokyo Bay lost to Ichihara
Tokyo Dragons lost to Ichihara
British Embassy lost to Tokyo Dragons 
Shizuoka Kytes lost to Tokyo Dragons
Shizuoka Kytes lost to Nagoya
Indian Engineers lost to Tokyo Wombats
Tokyo Giants lost to Gunma
Tokyo Giants lost to YC&AC
British Embassy lost to YC&AC

The final Rating table as of June 30, 2005 is based on the combined results of Table A and Table B. Thus the Rating as of June 30, 2005 will look like the following. Note that Table B will change every month based on that month's results and may not be reproduced here again.

Rating Criteria

Going forward, the following criteria will be used for the Rating:

1. All matches that classify as an ODI (these include the KCL matches, any other tournament matches and all reported friendly matches) will be taken into account
2. Tournaments such as Twenty20, Six-a-side will be excluded for Rating calculation
3. A tournament is defined as one that involves three or more teams in ODI format
4. The Base Table for a season will always be the Rating Table created at the end of the previous season
5. Any club that has not played a minimum of 5 matches in a season will be given an Adjusted Ranking in the Base Table at the end of each season. In other words, they will be ranked below the clubs that have played 5 or more matches at the end of the season
6. At the end of every season, the Rating will be recalculated based the results of the current and the previous year. Thus, at the end of 2005, the Base Table will contain the results of games played in 2004 and 2005 only(results of 2004 will be taken out of the statistics) and in the subsequent years, the oldest year results will be removed, making the Base Table containing only the results of last two years reflecting the current state and strength of a club

To explain Point 4 above, the Base Table for 2006 season will be the Rating Table that is formed at the end of the 2005. Now, we understand that this can be a bit confusing to the ordinary reader. There are two primary reasons  why we can not use the current Rating table for calculating the WPI.

Firstly, the timely unavailability of results of the matches in Japan. For e.g., once a few results are obtained and the ranking changed (including the calculation of WPI), any result that was reported after this can not be applied retroactively. Where as if we use the previous year's rating as the Base Table, the ranking difference in that stays constant and is easy to calculate the WPI for the current year.

Secondly, as stated in the beginning, many a times, clubs fail to field a full eleven or their best team making upset victories quite common in Japan cricket. While the winning deserve all the credit, it is not fair to give them a bonus point which might result in a further change, apart from the change that may have already occurred due to their upset victory. So we decided to use the Base Table's ranking difference for the calculation of bonus point.

In other words, the current Rating Table will show the current ranking of each club while the Base Table is used only for the calculation of the bonus point and WPI based on the ranking difference in that table.

It must also be noted that we may do away with this Base Table system after a careful monitoring of the current system and also based your valuable feedback and suggestions.