Home Advantage in Cricket: Myth or Reality? - A Statistical Examination
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Regardless of which sport you happen to watch, the concept of home advantage exists. It makes sense: playing at home, in front of fervent support who cheer on the home side, is surely going to help a team succeed. It is the same in every sport, and it is a reason why so many sports teams are known for their amazing home records. From Liverpool Football Club in English football to the Denver Nuggets in the National Basketball Association (NBA), home advantage is a proven concept.
When it comes to cricket, though, the idea of home advantage becomes a little more skewed.
When we look at the historical figures around home advantage in cricket, the details can be quite interesting. One of the main changes in cricket is that the game's most common form, test cricket, is played over several days. Especially when focusing on international cricket, the most popular form of the game, home advantage makes a lot of sense. The reasons why home advantage in test cricket is so prominent can include:
These reasons are a quick summary of why home advantage in cricket appears to be so prominent. It is a good reason why, when you look at the best bookmakers in the world, you will find that most give the home team a significant leg-up. Betting on the away team to win brings in much bigger winnings in cricket than in other sports due to how hard it is.
The above reasons make it easy to understand why test cricket, in particular, has such a history of home advantage. From teams from the Sub-Saharan region of the world struggling with the cold and damp conditions of countries like England and New Zealand to the opposite, the English struggling in the heat Down Under in Australia or across in the more arid Indian weather, there is ample evidence of this.
However, the actual figures paint a slightly different picture regarding home advantage in cricket.
What Do The Numbers Say?
Home advantage absolutely can make cricket games a little easier to estimate. However, this is not always the case—momentum can have a huge role in the deciding results.
For example, sports analysis platform Sportskeeda found that looking at games from January 1st, 2014, to March 5th, 2018, provided a stark contrast in home versus away wins. They found that across 33 test series in which the away team won a match, there were 19 wins, seven draws, and seven losses.
In a way, then, it shows how important it is for an away team to pick up some results during a Test series. However, in international cricket, around 60% of home games are won by the home team, per ChicagoBooth. It also comes down to the quality of the team, though; a major cricket nation like Australia, for example, wins, on average, four Tests for every defeat they suffer. Lesser nations, though, are more likely to be closer to a 50/50 split.
It is believed that the average win/loss ratio in international test cricket is around 1.98 wins to a loss, so most teams are winning around two Tests for every loss. According to The Cricket Monthly, Australia had the best win percentage on its review across the last twenty years at the time of writing, with a win ratio of 57.7%. However, they lost just 23.2% of their games while drawing 19%.
For other forms of cricket, like T20 or ODI cricket, the results seem to be more skewed to who wins the toss as opposed to who has home advantage. However, a 2005 study found that cricket crowds were deemed to be ‘insignificant’ in terms of impacting the overall result.
So, it looks like the home advantage part of cricket is only partially true. In the past, it was felt like the home team would almost certainly dominate; across a larger series game like a Test series, that might still be true, but other forms of cricket, which are becoming more popular, say otherwise.
