The Call of Fantasy Sport

FOR ALL THE issues surrounding it, I have en­joyed playing fantasy sport and continue to do so. It wouldn’t be wrong to say fantasy sport or rather the investment in fantasy sport has even helped me know more about certain aspects of the sport that I wouldn’t have normally invested in earli­er. Associate nations’ women’s cricket is a prime exam­ple. In normal circumstances, I wouldn’t really watch a Papua New Guinea or a Thailand trying to qualify for the ICC Women’s World Cup. While playing fantasy cricket, I do. And by doing so, I have unearthed special stories that have left me in awe. The Thailand women’s team’s journey was one such.

First, let me make a very basic point. You don’t play fantasy cricket for money. At least, I don’t. Rather, most play fantasy sport for the love of the sport and from the standpoint of fan passion. To be more involved, have a kind of say in the game that was otherwise missing. If your fantasy captain wins the player of the match award, it leaves you with a sense of satisfaction. That you got it right and that you understand the sport well.

No amount of calculation, including mathematical formulas for predicting the optimal line-up for fantasy cricket contests, can come up with a perfect formula owing to the immense number of variables in cricket. Had it been the case, mathematicians and data coders would have won fantasy contests every single day. As Souvik Naha has argued, “There is much more to team selection than performance index and recent form. How does one enter factors like home advantage, players’ familiarity with the playing ground, or the chance of rain overturning every estimate and forcing cricketers to do what they otherwise would not have? It takes a fair bit of knowledge-driven gut feeling to get most of these right day after day.”

Naha goes on to say that he cringed when former cricketer Virender Sehwag asked fans to listen to their hearts when selecting fantasy teams in an advertisement. His signing off, saying “Om Malamalay Namah (May You Win Buckets of Cash)”, was evenmore embarrassing.

Success in fantasy sport, I will argue, is based largely on research and knowledge. In fact, it also adds to the existing corpus of knowledge and helps in a better understanding of the sport. While many have now started to follow women’s cricket in India, and will do so with the World Cup just weeks away, not many follow international women’s cricket as closely as they do the men’s game. This is where it starts to get interesting. In a match between India and Australia, for example, you need to know the Australian team as well to make the right calls in fantasy cricket. Will a potential fantasy player opt for Alyssa Healy as wicket-keeper using more number of points or will he or she go with Richa Ghosh from India? Will Meg Lanning, the Australian skipper, make a fantasy team or can young Shafali Varma be a better option? Is Deepti Sharma a better choice of all-rounder over the talented Ashleigh Gardner? Unless someone knows the strengths and weaknesses of the Australian team as well as he or she does of India, it is impossible to win a fantasy contest. Just as the players on the field do their research on the opponents and there are notes on every player they are likely to come up against, fantasy players maintain records of all players playing in a particular contest and their past performances against the team they are up against. Emotion or nationalism has little role in this and picking an India-heavy team against Australia in T20 women’s cricket may well end up being counter-productive. Australia are not only the reigning world champions, they are by far the most accomplished women’s team in the world at the moment in the T20 format. Fantasy teams, it is fair to say, should reflect the reality. Every Australia game means at least six players get picked from the world’s best team and the number can often go up to seven, the maximum number permitted from a particular team in a fantasy contest.

Success in fantasy sport is based on research and knowledge. In a match between India and Australia, you need to know the Australian team as well to make the right calls in fantasy cricket. Will a potential fantasy player opt for Alyssa Healy as wicket-keeper or will he or she go with Richa Ghosh from India?

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This, however, changes when we come to the 50-over format. India is a far better team in the conventional ODI game and someone like Mithali Raj, for her amazing consistency, is a very good option to have as a batter. Smriti Mandhana is far more consistent than most others and can well be a captaincy candidate. And Jhulan Goswami, despite all else, is still a very good pick.

The other aspect I wish to draw attention to and something that plays a key role in impacting outcome in fantasy cricket is knowledge of team strategy. For example, Ellyse Perry, one of the best players in the women’s game in the world, batted at No 7 for Australia on many occasions in the recent past. The argument was that Perry was not scoring as quick­ly as the team would have liked and had she batted at the top of the order, there was a chance the opposition would be able to keep the Australian scoring rate under check. This was a case in point during the World T20 in 2018. Right through the World Cup, Perry hardly got a chance to bat. With the top order firing consistently, her utility in fantasy teams was limited. In the Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) that followed the World Cup, Perry opened the innings for the Sydney Sixers and end­ed up scoring 600-plus runs and was the leagues’ highest scorer with two hundreds. While she was of limited value to teams in the World Cup and could be left out if need be, in WBBL Perry would inevitably be the first name on the fantasy team sheet. While Perry averaged a meagre 20 in the World Cup, she scored at a stagger­ing average of 50-plus every innings in WBBL. In fact, it would not be wrong to say that both Perry and Australian captain Meg Lanning were support casts in the World Cup winning campaign but had assumed lead roles by the time WBBL had come about.

If Perry was something of a wrong investment during the World T20, Deandra Dottin from the West Indies was good value for every fantasy player. Dottin would star with both bat and ball and if anyone had followed the West Indies-South Africa series in September-October 2018 in the Caribbean, choosing her was a foregone conclusion. Dottin would open the innings with both bat and ball and that would give her the most opportunity to make an impact. Even if she failed with the bat, she would have every opportunity to deliver with the ball, making her a safe investment in fantasy cricket. Dottin, who plays a very similar role to that of Perry, was a better option during the World T20. The risk factor as far as Dottin was concerned was non-existent. While Perry is better known and more versatile, West Indian and Australian team strategy for the World T20 meant she was less important to fantasy players when compared to Dottin.

So while the debate on fantasy sport is ongoing and will be so at least in the foreseeable future, suffice to say there is a lot to it than meets the eye. Beyond the big bucks and the glamour, it is also about the little joys. The fan passion and the pleasure in getting things right. When your favourite batter scores a tonne or your favourite bowler picks a five-for, there is a sense of real joy that we all experience. No monies can match that and that element to fantasy sport is also something that we need to always take into account and talk about.

About The Author

Boria Majumdar

Boria Majumdar is a sport journalist and the author of, among other titles, Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians. He is a contributor to Open

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