A Multiple Criteria Decision Making Approach for Ranking Cricket Captains

Quantifying the importance of a captain in cricket matches is a complex task that can be regarded as a multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. We do not find any concrete work on the analysis of the performance of cricket captains of teams. Captain has an influential role in winning the matches and trophies for any respective team. The study concerns fourteen influential parameters that help in evaluating the captain's decision-making capabilities, individual performance, and team-leading ability, which ultimately contributes to winning the match and title for the team. This research proposes an integrated multivariate MCDM approach where Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is used to assess the weights of criteria and techniques like Multi-Objective Optimization on the basis of Ratio Analysis (MOORA) method and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) are used to prioritize and rank the captains accordingly. The performance of various MCDM methodologies and also based on winning percentage is investigated with ESPN Cricinfo rankings using the Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient. The results indicate that the proposed PCA-MOORA method yields promising insights for ranking captains. Finally, sensitivity analysis has also been performed to highlight the efficiency and reliability of the PCA-MOORA technique.