CRICTRS: Embeddings based Statistical and Semi Supervised Cricket Team Recommendation System

Abstract: Team Recommendation has always been a challenging aspect in team sports. Such systems aim to recommend a player combination best suited against the opposition players, resulting in an optimal outcome. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised statistical approach to build a team recommendation system for cricket by modelling players into embeddings. To build these embeddings, we design a qualitative and quantitative rating system which considers the strength of opposition also for evaluating player performance. The embeddings obtained, describes the strengths and weaknesses of the players based on past performances of the player. We also embark on a critical aspect of team composition, which includes the number of batsmen and bowlers in the team. The team composition changes over time, depending on different factors which are tough to predict, so we take this input from the user and use the player embeddings to decide the best possible team combination with the given team composition.