Comments | skthewimp: What were the odds of an India-Pakistan final?

skthewimp

What were the odds of an India-Pakistan final?

Jul 03, 2008 23:21

After the IPL, I've had an overdose of limited overs cricket and haven't been watching much of it. Not even following it on Cricinfo - haven't even found it that interesting.

Anyways I got just a little bit of enthu for following it thanks to India's qualification for the finals. And that led me to the tournament rules, which I find ridiculous. I ( Read more... )

cricket, sport

Comments 4

anonymous July 4 2008, 04:00:18 UTC

"Even if SL lost both their games, and say India beat Pakistan twice, it would come down to net run rate between SL and Pak, and with the former having had more games against the mini-minnows, they would in all probability have the better net run rate!"

Not correct. If SL had lost to both India and Pakistan and India beat Pak twice, then Pak would have gone through on the basis of higher number of wins in Super Four stage.

Though I agree that SL got an unfair advantage getting to play Bangladesh twice, whereas India and Pakistan played them only once.

Mohan

skthewimp July 4 2008, 17:02:54 UTC

i admit i didn't read the fine print regarding breaking ties.
thanks for the inputs.

anonymous July 4 2008, 05:41:28 UTC

I don't think 1/8 is right. See there are 4 indeterminate games- 2 Ind vs Pak, 1 Pak vs SL and 1 Ind vs SL game. Assume that all pairs of teams are equally matched (50% of either winning), and that IND, PAK, SL > Bangladesh > HK, UAE with 100% probability (your assumptions basically), there are 16 possible outcomes of the 4 games.

"Even if SL lost both their games, and say India beat Pakistan twice, it would come down to net run rate between SL and Pak" The tie-breaking criterion is not NRR, but wins in Super 4 stage. So apart from the 2 outcomes you discussed (India & Pak beating each other once, and SL losing to both Ind &Pak), there are 2 more outcomes that could have led to SL being eliminated- India beating Pak twice and both teams beating SL (in that case, points would be 8, 4, 4 with Pak edging out SL with 2 super4 wins to SL's 1) and
Pak beating India twice with both teams beating SL (again 8,4,4).

So probability of an India-Pak final is 1/4 and not 1/8.

Monkee

skthewimp July 4 2008, 17:04:04 UTC

I miscalculated with respect to the tie break rules. What you said makes sense. And in a "normal" scenario, probability of India-Pak final would be 1/3 and here it's 1/4. It's not that big a difference but biased nevertheless