WASP up!

Over the years while watching cricket games on TV, my daughter always asks me "So who’s winning dad?” and I always stumble to answer the age old question.  My usual reply to her is, that Team A scored 275 and now Team B is 45 for 1 in the 9th over and my daughter usually reply is "I’m not asking the score papa! I want to know who is winning the game?" If it was any other sports one would know right away that which team is winning and by how much but cricket is a funny game, when it comes to predicting the winner, as long as there are wickets in hand and overs to be played anything can happen, like I always say "this is cricket so Kuch bhi oh sakta hai"
The other day when I was watching the ODI series between West Indies and New Zealand and I saw some stats flashing on the bottom right hand corner of the screen.  First I couldn’t make it as to what that was as I thought it was the bowler’s name but it remained up there throughout the game.  This is the first time I saw or heard of WASP (Winning and Score Predictor) and intrigued me enough to Google it, as the announcers were too busy talking about how they played game in the 80s and 90s.

What I learned after googling it is that WASP gives out a predicted score in the first inning and in the second, it gives the probability the batting team winning the game.
WASP was developed by University of Canterbury and it’s a measure of how well the teams have done to that point, rather than forecast of how well they will do from that point on.  
As Brad Throng in his blog “The models are based on a database of all non-shortened ODI and Twenty20 games played between the top eight countries since the late 2006.  The first-innings model estimates the additional runs likely to be scored as a function of the number of balls and wickets remaining. The second innings model estimates the probability of winning as a function of balls and wickets remaining, runs scored to date and the target score.’’
I’m not going to bore you guys with the mumbo jumbo of how it calculates but at least I can tell my 9 year old who is winning and that’s WASP up