In cricket and business, the right preparation is everything
On Wednesday night the Australian men’s cricket team completed a six-week tour of India, involving four tests and three one-dayers.
Australia won the one-day series 2-1, a fantastic result against an Indian team that haven’t often lost in the last decade. Players and fans will be rightly satisfied with the outcome, but let’s be honest, this tour was all about the epic test series.
In the tests, Australia had a mighty win in Indore on a pitch that, despite being in the broad spectrum of ‘typically Indian’, both sides found troublesome. In a low-scoring game, Australia’s batting became more assured as the game progressed, and in the end they held their nerve to cruise to victory in a small run chase. The preparation and learnings from earlier matches had proven its value.
Unfortunately those earlier matches were the first and second tests, which India won resoundingly and meant they’d won the trophy at the halfway point of the series.
Cricket forums were rife with accusations of the Australians’ failure to prepare, some going so far as to claim it demonstrated a lack of respect for the game and the opposition (what seems more likely is that professional cricketing schedules are simply too packed, a separate debate). Fans have asked where the lead-up games against regional teams have gone, staged in the past to acclimatise players to unfamiliar conditions.
Why did we not prepare more? It’s a reasonable question.
At White Box, we specialise in data visualisation
And preparation!
A pillar of our five step process to effective dashboard building is preparation. That means talking to our customers about their industry, their business, their role, and their day-to-day pains and joys, well before diving into the data challenge at hand.
That gives us a real connection to truly understand our customers’ needs, collaboratively flesh out objectives and identify the visual solutions that will achieve them. Important questions emerge and are answered, meaning the build phase of the dashboard starts on a rock solid base.
We don’t wait for the ‘third test’ to understand your unique and critical business metrics.
Welcome back to the cricket…
Now, what of the old days? Were Australia’s results better when they arrived on overseas tours early and played warm-ups against provincial teams?
The truth is ‘no’ – Australia has won one test series ever in India, and that was with a golden generation of players of the early 2000s. In fact a quick scan of our touring history going back to the famous tied test of 1986 shows preparation hasn’t helped one bit, peaking with a horrific 4-0 loss in 2013 despite that tour involving a couple of practice matches.
The chart built in Tableau tracks series results over the seven test tours since 1986:
The y-axis represents the series margin – positive means a victorious series, with 2004 the only shining light.
Colour indicates the number of wins – the 1986 series may look like a respectable 0-0 draw, but at least in other series we’ve come away with individual wins (grey to green shades).
Line thickness represents the number of lead-up games played – starting out fat with the slow-burn tours of past decades, then trailing off to the hairline of 2023. Counter to the ‘preparation’ argument, Australia’s most frequent result is a 1-2 series loss, which we’ve achieved with increasingly fewer lead-up games.
So, didn’t you just shoot yourself in the foot?
Not at all, because what this suggests is that playing lead-up games isn’t the RIGHT preparation. Players and management had said as much on this tour, noting that in the past some pitches provided for practice games bore no resemblance to the test match pitches, making them a futile exercise. Contrast this with Matt Hayden’s rigorous preparation prior to his breakout 2001 series, which reputedly involved months of full day’s of batting on wickets specially curated to emulate Indian pitches. Australia may have lost that series (VVS Laxman, it still hurts) but Hayden was unstoppable.
Of course, we’re also overlooking (and plenty of rabid fans do too) one particularly distinctive factor – the opposition. The truth is, India, like so many sporting teams, are a fine side who play brilliantly in their home conditions.
In contrast, when we’re building BI solutions, we’re working together with our customers. At least to this stage, we’ve never met a customer who wants to deliberately thwart our efforts to deliver winning results!
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Being adaptable to different industries is one of the important competencies of our industry. But if someone tells you “data is data” without trying to deeply understand your business, be wary.
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