For example, for Australia winning the Pune Test in India in 2016, a K-factor of 48 was used, but when India beat Australia in the next Test in Bangalore, the K-factor was 32. Using a second value of K-factor, a lower one, helped in accounting for home matches.

Because the number of Test matches played a year is rather low compared to the number of games in other league sports, a high K-factor has been used. This number usually varies between 20 and 40 for different sports. There are two parts to Elo rating calculations:ġ) Measuring the expectation of win of each opponent in a match, which depends on the difference in the teams' current ratings, which in turn depends on what happened in their previous games, and so on.Ģ) Applying a weight factor, K, which determines the final exchange of points between teams, or ratings fluctuations. The number of points gained or lost depends on the factors above. When a team wins, it extracts points out of the opposition when it loses, it hands points to the opponent. The algorithm uses form, history, the quality of opposition, and in the current study, the difference in home-away and subcontinental-outside conditions, by just considering the result of a game ( see explainer graphic below). Since then, variations of Elo have been applied to many other sports - baseball, football, basketball, tennis, boardgame championships, electronic sports, and even in consumer apps such as Tinder. The graph shows the Indian Test team's ratings as calculated using an adaptation of the Elo algorithm, the beautifully simple yet extremely powerful mathematical tool that was developed around 60 years ago to determine the rankings of chess players. That's the Indian team under Virat Kohli's captaincy. Consider the right-most peak in the above figure, which towers above everything else. Seen in totality, the mountains reveal their breadth and scale focus on one and you can unravel not just the physical dimensions but the ridges, the valleys, the stories and the legends. The graph is much like views of Himalayan peaks from a north Indian hill station. It is only in the last quarter of the span that the team surfaces above the average marker consistently. This and so much more in Captains File India, From Nayudu to Kohli, India’s 32 Test Cricket Captains.The numbers on the vertical axis - 1400, 15 - can be roughly translated to poor, average and good, and so the first inference from the graph is that for much of their history, India have been a below-average Test team, which is not new information to anyone who follows cricket.

The man he replaced, Nari Contractor, nearly died after receiving a blow on head while batting in the West Indies.Īllegations of ball tampering, match fixing, too aggressive, too defensive, a few tears, a Tied Test match and a team all out even though only five wickets were down. Three Tests later and he was the captain.

The Maharajkumar of Vizianagaram “did not understand field placings or bowling changes and never maintained any regular batting order.” Mansoor Ali Khan lost the vision in his right eye in a car accident and six months later made his debut for India. The Colonel CK Nayudu reportedly disallowed his players from drinking water at the drinks break. From the days of the Maharajas and Nawabs when one had to be royalty to lead India into battle, a position no commoner was fit to fill, to the modern day of helmets and television, stump cams and DRS, India’s 32 finest are here together for the first time. From Nayudu to Kohli, India’s 32 Test cricket captains.

India cricket captain 2016