'Having superior data, better data than anyone else, gives you a potential advantage in decision-making.'
Relying on data science has become an integral part of the planning of teams featuring in the IPL and when blended with perfect balance of "gut feeling", it certainly improves decision-making, saoid Mo Bobat, Director of Cricket at Royal Challengers Bengaluru
Bobat, a former Performance Director at the England and Wales Cricket, spoke about how one should be interpreting data and what should be used from the heap that is available currently in the cricketing ecosystem.
"The balance between using the data or trusting your gut feeling at the moment, if you can strike it right, it will always help decision-making improve," said Bobat, who has also worked as a consultant with RCB in the past.
Data is a "core currency" for leaders and the ability to make sense of the information available is key to success.
"Having superior data, better data than anyone else, gives you a potential advantage in decision-making. How you make sense of that information and data, and knowing whether if you can apply it to the moment, make the difference.
"Executing your decision and how you follow through is very important. As a leader in sport, that's your core currency,” Bobat said at the recently held RCB Innovation Lab Indian Sports Summit Powered by Leaders.
"Every time you go into a game, you're going to dig through the information and the data in front of you. You'll try and make sense of how you can expose the opposition's weaknesses and make the most of your strengths and then review yourself against that after the match. And then, you go again," he said.
Bobat noted that one of the key concerns was how to interpret and use the data, especially when there is an abundance of it available at your fingertips.
"Not all decisions are the same. Take an auction for example, you might have six weeks to plan for an auction and a couple of weeks that would be intense. You can spend a lot of time going through quite a structured process. However, in-game decision-making is a lot harder, you don't have that same luxury of time. So, you have to think about how you want to make your decisions and what you're guiding principles are."
"However, it's dangerous to assess your decision-making based on what's right or wrong or what works or doesn't work. It's not as binary as that," he added.
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