It’s just not cricket: rules and the gentleman’s game

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Reade, J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8610-530X, Singleton, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8247-8830 and Jewell, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4413-6618 (2021) It’s just not cricket: rules and the gentleman’s game. In: Butler, R. (ed.) Advances in Sports Economics. Agenda Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. ISBN 9781788213554

Abstract/Summary

Cricket offers a wealth of opportunity and potential insights for economists and other researchers. Focusing on the oldest domestic cricket competition, the English County Championship, we discuss issues of demand, home advantage, competitive balance and the importance of winning the pre-match coin toss to determine the playing order. Despite cricket being generally regarded as a sport for traditionalists, the County Championship is remarkable in how often the rule makers have altered its format. We study one recent major change, the replacement of the mandatory pre-match coin toss with an uncontested one, whereby the away team could decide whether to bowl first or face a toss to bat instead. In theory, this ought to have reduced home advantage, made the toss matter more when it was contested, and incentivised teams to prepare better pitches leading to longer matches. We found no evidence of the first or the last of these effects, but matches did become more predictable once the toss was decided. This suggests that the rule makers were right to abandon this experimental change after only four seasons.

Item Type	Book or Report Section
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/91647
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Politics, Economics and International Relations > Economics
Uncontrolled Keywords	Home advantage, First-mover advantage, Decision making under uncertainty, Coin toss, County Championship, First-class cricket
Publisher	Agenda Publishing
Download/View statistics	View download statistics for this item

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Date Deposited:	07 Jul 2020 14:43	Date item deposited into CentAUR
Last Modified:	29 Jul 2023 15:47	Date item last modified

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