UP490 Inside Edge - Cricket's Analytics Arms Race

Inside Edge is Unofficial Partner's regular series on the business of cricket, co-hosted by Richard Gillis and Mike Jakeman.

Freddie Wilde represents the new generation of cricket analytics professionals who have emerged to play a central role in team strategy. His journey from journalist to CricViz to England's white-ball analyst, combined with his recent role in RCB's maiden IPL title triumph, positions him as one of cricket's most influential data minds.

Career Trajectory

• 2015-2017: One of CricViz's first employees, joined part-time then full-time
• 2017-2023: Head of Performance Analysis at CricViz (7 years)
• 2021-present: Lead analyst for Oval Invincibles (The Hundred)
• 2022-present: Team analyst for Royal Challengers Bangalore (IPL)
• 2023-present: England white-ball analyst, replacing Nathan Leamon

Major Achievements

• Co-authored "Cricket 2.0: Inside the T20 Revolution" with Tim Wigmore (2019)
  • Winner: Wisden Book of the Year 2020 and Telegraph Sports Book Awards 
• Data analyst in Royal Challengers Bangalore's maiden IPL title (2025)
• Worked with multiple T20 franchises globally including England and Oval Invincibles.

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Transcript

0:00

Hello, Richard Gillis. Welcome to Unofficial Partner, and this is Inside Edge, our series on the business of Cricket. With my co-host Mike Jakeman. Our guest today is Freddie Wild, who is one of the new generation of cricket analytics professionals who've transformed the game.

Freddie Wilde: 0:16

historically, RCB have been a team who have become renowned for. heavily in one or two players, quite often, star studded batters at the top of the order and neglecting other areas of the team. And, and to be fair, they were a hell of an entertaining side for a team who lost a lot. You know, that was part of the allure of them as a franchise was, you know, they were very watchable but maddeningly frustrating in that they couldn't sort of get across the line.

0:40

Freddie Wilde, is one of the most sought after of a new generation of cricket analytics professionals who've transformed the game over the last 15 to 20 years. He was a journalist when I first know him. He wrote a very good book along with Tim Wigmore called Cricket 2.0 inside the T 20 Revolution, which was Wisdom's Book of the Year in 2020. And he was head of performance analysis at Crick Vis for seven years. He's now the lead analyst for the over Invincibles team analyst for the IPL winning Royal Challenges, Bangalore so it's just back from that event and. He's just finished a stint as England's White Ball Analyst alongside Nathan Lehman, who we referenced in the uh, podcast. We also reference another podcast with, um, Mo Bobat, which I'll put in the show notes, which is again, quite a nice accompaniment to this. And it also turns out that Mo is Freddy's boss at the, uh, Royal Challenges Bangalore. Anyway, loads in there. And it's not just about cricket, I assure you. It's really fascinating insight from someone who's right at the sharp end of one of the most interesting areas of the sports business. This episode of Unofficial Partner is brought to you by Sid Lee Sport. Sid Lee Sport is a new breed of agency that combines world class creativity with deep sponsorship expertise, flawless operational delivery. And a culture of marketing effectiveness. We've got to know the team over the last few months. They're an impressive bunch who believe that sports marketing can and should be done better. They've got a creative philosophy of producing famous campaigns and activations that build buzz and conversation in a category that too often looks and sounds the same. And they're pioneering a new standard of effectiveness in sports marketing using econometrics and attribution models to go beyond traditional media, ROI. So if you're looking for an agency to take your brand to the top, get in touch with the team at Sid Lee Sport where brands become champions.

Richard Gillis, UP: 2:43

What did you think of my Claude does Wild. I thought it was quite an interesting experiment. I've started to do that with guests and it's a sort of very much a hit and miss affair.

Freddie Wilde: 2:54

I was pretty impressed, because it was pretty thorough. I didn't feel like I was befitting of such a long, explanation as to what I'd done or who I was. So, when I. Flick through that. I thought, God, that's a very long explanation for what I didn't seem to think necessarily warranted that. But, the detail in there was pretty good. I mean, as we said, we chatted a bit on WhatsApp about it. There's a couple of things that it maybe hadn't quite picked up, but like I'm increasingly using things like that. Mainly chat, GPT, but like to just do, know, research tasks or, you know, sometimes rewrite an email or whatever it might be. is very efficient and a lot easier than doing it yourself a lot of the time. Um.

Richard Gillis, UP: 3:37

are you into this? Are you gonna hang back in a very sort of professorial way? You're not gonna, you know, dirty your hands with, with large language models?

Mike Jakeman: 3:46

it's really tricky because it's. Balancing potential like efficiency gains. Here I am being the economist versus risking making myself obsolete.

Richard Gillis, UP: 3:56

Yeah.

Mike Jakeman: 3:56

There are contracts that I've signed as a freelance writer in which I say I won't use them. But increasingly, you know, I see it popping up in different places. And it does make me a bit nervous just in terms of, you know, how easily some of what I do could be replaced. On the other hand, what I've not seen from it yet is the creative stuff. So it can create what's already been done by us in perpetuity and do infinite variations on it. But I haven't seen it create the big ideas that are where, I suppose I try and bring like the most value add to the people I work for,

Richard Gillis, UP: 4:37

I did a sort of experiment. run a few things with it. I'm slightly obsessed with it. And, and like you, I wouldn't ever, I. Publish anything or put anything out under my own name, you know, using it. it's a research tool at the moment, but I can sort of see what I did was, I ran through, like a, I gave it a load of information from my substack newsletter sort of archive. And I ran through it and asked it to look for patterns around finance and various things come back and sort of present it in a McKinsey esque type way, you know, in terms of like that, that very dry format. And it was quite interesting because it did it, and you initially you think, oh wow, this is, this is incredible. You know, then when you went down a layer, you thought, actually no, they've, there's a whole load of really mistakes that it's made as you go through fundamental things that, and then has taken that mistake and you could, and because I've written it all, the only person that would know what the mistakes are. It sort of took, so it took something that, there was an example where it called the whole thing, the money Doesn't Care. Okay. Which was a line that I, I'd written some at some point on the Substack and it sort of took that and then ran with that as an idea and then built around that and then added a load of things. because they got that quote out of context, everything else was wrong. And it was quite interesting because actually if you read it at first glance, and I put both versions out'cause I sort of said, right, okay, here's what it did initially. And then I got it to critique itself. And it absolutely hammers itself, you know, in terms of like, this is a load of old shit, but it, it sort of got fundamental things wrong. And then extrapolated on those and you sort of think, wow.'cause I. That is really gonna be difficult to unpick because I read through it and it took me a while, but I'd written it and it was quite, you know, so I can see, you can sort of see the pull of it. And particularly not in the game of, you know, daily churn and wanting to sort of just keep on producing. And you can see across LinkedIn people are just banging stuff up and to see. But it's really quite an interesting problem better than you think and much, much worse than you think as well at the same time. But we should jump onto Fred. We should talk about Freddy. They said this is a very long way in. So what Claude said about Freddy was he's 28.

Freddie Wilde: 7:15

I am actually 30, 31.

Richard Gillis, UP: 7:18

This is brilliant son of veteran Sunday Times correspondent Simon Wild, which I think is true. Uh, educate background in journalism and analytics. Current role in the men's white ball cricket analyst, which is not true either. So of the first four things it gave us two were absolutely fundamentally wrong and we'll talk about that in a minute. And then career trajectory, it's easy for me to say. Uh, one of Crick Viss first employees signed. Joined part-time, then full-time, then head of performance analysis at Crick Vis for seven years. Lead analyst for over Invincibles in the hundred team analyst for the Royal Challenges Bangalore. And then it's got that mistake of, well you were England White ball analyst replacing Nathan Lehman, but you are not that anymore. So it's sort of slightly outta date. Any other, any other red flags before we go and we talk properly and we'll move away from Claude in a minute, but I'm interested in what

Freddie Wilde: 8:14

I defend it in the only thing it said about my age was it said 28 at time of appointment as England analyst, which was correct. And then if you just do the maths from there, it would take you to 31. So, that was sort of wrong, but not quite wrong. But generally that's a pretty decent summary. I think it's more probably my own, you know, I'm sort of being a bit modest in thinking there would be that much information about me on the internet. And, there seemingly was enough for it to pull together a fairly decent biography. So, but yeah, that the, the rest of the information there is largely correct in it and, and, the message.

Richard Gillis, UP: 8:46

I've, I've run this on much less interesting people than you. And you know, it is incredible how much information is, is out there on all of us.

Freddie Wilde: 8:55

well that was the thing. There were a few details around, I, I can't recall exactly what they were now, but there were a few details in the sort of. In the text further down that I was impressed that it had sort of managed to get those bits. So obviously there's the basic, like who you work for, what have you done, you know, what was your career trajectory, which you can probably get off LinkedIn and various social media sites and whatever. But, it was the, there were bits of detail in there, which also just indicated that, you know, I suppose it is obviously as it does t trawling the web for, for those sort of nuggets that flesh out what's otherwise biographical information with a little bit more, nuanced and contextualized stuff. And there are also some interesting, topics raised, you know, around. Cricket analytics in the industry, which I'm sure we'll get into today. You know, it's sort of, it tapped into a few interesting areas and it's certainly thought provoking. I find sometimes it's useful. What I find is if I ask chat GPTA question or things like that, it's not that it necessarily produces something new, but it's, it's that it might, it's a good way of checking that you've not missed anything. You know, so if you were like to be like searching what is the future of cricket analytics, for example, you might come up with four points and then actually there's a fifth pretty decent sized point that you've not got, and therefore it sort of draws attention to it. So it's quite useful as almost like a checker just to make sure you haven't missed something obvious. And I thought that did fairly good job of summarizing, some interesting topics, which as I said, we'll probably get into.

Mike Jakeman: 10:15

The most interesting, I think, place to start with this is the decision you made, Freddy, to go from, cricket journalism into Cricket analytics by joining Cricket. Could you give us a bit of an oversight into what that was at that point? Because. This is only 10 years ago. We're gonna discover that Koalas changed in.

Freddie Wilde: 10:36

Yeah. and I mean, I think, it's useful to understand a little bit about like cricket analysis as a role as well because it has existed probably in some shape or form for around 20 years or so, like as a sort of role, but it hadn't bec it didn't really gain much prominence until around 2010 then around 20 15, 20 16 it started to really pick up, I think maybe a little bit earlier. So. In the early 2010s, I was acting largely as a journalist or freelance journalist. I was working whilst at university writing for a number of cricket websites like CR Info, all Out Cricket, which is a magazine, wisdom, cricket, monthly, things like that. Doing basic, basically I was sort of beginning to pursue a career in journalism, which as you've already pointed out something my dad did. My dad is a cricket journalist, and I guess I sort of, I was interested in that. I knew enough about cricket that I felt like it was a more fun way of earning money than working in a pub, which is what many of my mates were doing. So I was doing, I did that, really just'cause it was a hobby or it was something of an interest and it began to develop into something more where I was being paid. But the shift to analysis happened, as I said, at the same time where analysis suddenly started becoming more of a role. Like if you'd spoken to me in 2010, let's say. I probably wouldn't have even, I would've hardly known it existed as, as a, as a role. And, again, the Claude summary, Richard, that you sent through Drew attention to Nathan Lehman, who I did replace as an analyst who was probably the first analyst to gain sort of, a bit of a reputation. And that was through probably 2010, two to 2015, 16 when he worked for England. And, and England put a lot of the work that he did, central to the way that they played cricket. And they had a lot of success, particularly under Andy Flower, with Nathan playing a big role. So in that era that the role of analysts started to become more prominent. And another factor, which we'll come onto as well is the rise of T 20 and, short form leagues that also necessitated the role of an analyst for reasons that we'll come onto. But when I was writing as a journalist,, I started to focus more, I. T 20 Cricket because it was what I, firstly I thought it was the most interesting form of the game. And secondly, it was under reported relative to test cricket. Like even now, if you go to a a hundred match, for example, there are very few, if any, journalists from a national newspaper in the media center. But then if you go to test match, center is full. So it was almost the fact that there was this big format that was super interesting, but no one was really writing about it. So I started to put more energy into doing that, that led me towards analysis because. T 20 in particular, I think is quite a difficult format to understand without at least some access to numbers, to, to understand, finer strengths and details and trends and patterns that are going on in the game that potentially are a bit more difficult to pick up unless you've got access to those numbers. So it was that focus on T 20 coupled with the relative lack of alternative sources of analysis that made me think, well, hang on. I think you need to have the numbers to get under the hood of this. and that led me to working a little bit more for Quick Vis, which was again, another company that I was working for on and off whilst being a journalist. And I just found it increasingly interesting. So

Richard Gillis, UP: 13:46

one of the interesting bits, I remember what it was on, you were on Twitter and I remember seeing you for the first time and started following you because of that. It felt like, and I put you in a group with up to Joe was around about that time as well, and they were coming out with really interesting snippets and just roots into stories from numbers. And I thought, okay, well this is really interesting and I started following you and you were doing really great stuff at that time, and so were you. And, and take this in entirely in, you know, as praise. I'm just interested in, are you a geek who wanted to be a journalist or were you a journalist who have learned the geek stuff or have you It is just sometimes people see it as a sort of art and science thing. And it's interesting'cause we're gonna go on to how far you've got in that world and people might assume you've got like a maths techie back background.

Freddie Wilde: 14:37

well, no. So I'm not, I would say I'm more of a, I, wouldn't use the term journalist, but I was interested in the storytelling side of it, trying to understand what was going on. And, and you know, that sort of goes back to the essence of, I think good sports journalism as being able to explain, you know, what's happening, why it's happening, why is this team good? Why are England suddenly winning, or why are they losing? and that was sort of the essence of it, which I think is actually very similar to, to a lot of the work you do as an analyst. You're trying to understand why something's happening. So I guess those two things are similar, but I. The, the journalism aspect puts more of an emphasis on then telling the story, and you're right to probably draw attention to that. Early on when I was doing quite a lot of work on Twitter, I would use the numbers to try and enhance. Well I was doing it partly for my own benefit to understand the game, but I think it then was, other people found it interesting because they were like, oh, okay, I understand that's why this is happening or this is why, you know, Chenai Super Kings are so successful in the IPL Freddy's drawn attention to lots of numbers that indicate what it is that they're doing well. So that sort of search for the truth in inverted commas was, was at the heart of what I did. I think even when I was doing it from a media perspective. It's just that what happened and will come onto this, I guess is like. I found that the truths that I were uncovering were actually of value to the teams themselves, and therefore I could make the transition from being someone who was writing about it to someone who was influencing it and being on the other side of the fence. So, and maybe that's just because the industry itself and the game itself was a bit more nascent. And so, so I think what I found was that the work that I was doing on the media side was of interest to teams. And maybe that's because maybe the team side of it hadn't developed as much as I thought it, it is a new format and as I said, analysis was a relatively new thing. So to an extent I think teams began to be like, hang on a sec, this is quite valuable. And also from quick vis side, the work that we were doing again, started around, working with broadcasters and again, probably more storytelling actually. We started to recognize how a value on the, on the performance side as well. So that transition happened for me at a similar time as it sort of happened for C vis as well, and Crick vis still do stuff in the media. But, I was sort of, I guess, at the forefront of pushing Crick Vis to try and do a little bit more work in the performance space because we quite quickly realized that's where there would be some value. And obviously it's pretty exciting to be working in that area.

Mike Jakeman: 17:01

Can you give us a bit of color about that? Because this is the thing I think lots of our, this is gonna come very interesting, bearing in mind that this is the early days of analytics. Quick vis, as you can explain, is hired by franchises or international teams to give them some information, which you then have to be what the conduit to pass this onto the players and persuade them that actually, you know, your numbers can tell'em something about what they need to do. That thought is potentially quite a guy in his.

Freddie Wilde: 17:28

Yeah. Yeah. I mean it sort of, I guess what a bit of, shedding a bit of light on the role of an analyst, that that's kind of what you have to do. Your, your job is to look at the data and sometimes video, it used to be more video based before data was sort of, took hold. And by that I mean there became more data sources. Your, your job was to using that e evidence, if you like, pass it over to players or coaches to help them play better or to help make better decisions. And you know, the most basic example might be you arrive at the ground and the coach and the captain say to you, look, can you just gimme the information on, chasing or defending in nighttime T 20 at this ground? What should we do? And you say, well, look, the history says that, you know, of the last 20 T 20 matches at this ground, 15 have been one chasing. That's the kind of information that then is fed into the coaches and the captain. They go, oh, I think we win the toss today. We'll probably chase the history for the venue is that, and you'll hear captains refer to that sometimes at the toss, and yeah, that, that's almost the most basic level of what you do, but it varies from that into sort of minute, bowling plans or field settings for specific batters. So you're right that it, it's quite a big change from sort of presenting that information maybe in an article or in a tweet to then doing it with a team. But I've found at least that the essence of what you're trying to do is the same. You're sort of tr again, and I'm hesitant to use the word storytelling, because I feel like with teams it's a little bit more dealing in facts. You don't want to be seen to be contorting the truth. But at the end of the day, if there is a strategy which you and the coaches, let's say, determine as being optimal, you know, maybe it's a certain ball with a certain field, it's your job then to try and sort of, not convince them to do it, but sell the idea. It's to say, look, this is what the numbers say, this is what the evidence says, and if you do this, it's a method for success. And that, that that same sort of the communication there is, is critical. You know, you can do all the work. the scenes, but if you're unable to convey the message in a way that convinces the, the players or the coaches that it's valuable, then it's kind of wasted time. So I felt like there was enough similarities in what I did in the media to what I now do with teams for it to sort of be a relatively seamless transition. There's been some challenges along the way and it's different. And certainly working in a, in a high performance environment with a lot of really talented athletes is very different to tapping away on your laptop in your bedroom. But there are enough crossovers that I think I managed to do it relatively effectively.

Richard Gillis, UP: 19:50

I'm thinking particularly in the early days and probably less so now, but I'll, I we'll talk about that in terms of the, what would you call them? The, the barriers for that information to be penetrated. There's a lot of people in sport who want, you know, it's about gut and instinct and, you know, personal ownership of their performance. And then there's this shift towards, actually, I over responsibility for performance to you Freddy and the coach? And we're seeing this not just a cricket specific thing, but there's, you know, across all sports, this, this tension. So you've got the initial money ball sort of era then, and cricket was quite early to that for obvious reasons.'cause it was quite applicable. now I want, you know, the end of this question is, is there a sort of slight shift back in terms of no, we want control back? Has there been a, that sort of, dynamic at play?

Freddie Wilde: 20:42

There definitely is, and I think it sort of, it varies between different teams, different players, different coaches, and there's a lot of different philosophies as to how best to deal with it. 15 years ago you didn't need to have a philosophy as to how to sort of handle data within your dressing room or analysis within your dressing room. Nowadays every major coach in, in T 20 leagues and international teams around the world will have an approach that they have towards how they deal with. That role. It's some, some people, I mean, I would say every team will have an analyst. In fact, I would say that's almost confidently that every major team around the world will have an analyst. Now the extent of their involvement varies massively. and at some instances they are very much in the background. They are asked questions and they respond to them when asked, but they don't really get involved in strategy or selection or, matchday tactics to any great degree. But they exist. And then at the other end of the spectrum, there'll be times when analysts are front and center of selection meetings, of discussions of planning, of Dugout decisions. And you know that there is a huge range of different approaches. I don't think that there is. A, a particular shift within the entire game. I think it's more between different coaches. You could work for one team where you are utilized massively, and you could go and work for a coach, a different coach who could utilize you hardly at all. And that's just the way that, that it goes. And I think the coach the coach analyst relationship is a, is an important one in the modern day game. Or coach, sometimes director of cricket as well. Particularly when you're thinking about recruitment. So I, historically you talk about coach, captain, that's definitely a dynamic, but I think increasingly the analyst coach and analyst, DOC. Relationship goes quite a long way to shaping the kind of team that a side is. Not necessarily if, if like you and or, or you know, an average person was sat in the stands watching, they would necessarily notice the difference. But in terms of the inner functionings of the side and how it operates, how many meetings they have, how detailed their training sessions are, the kind of cricket they want to play quite a lot of the time. the relationship between the analyst and the coach and DOC will be significant for those things that then flow off that I think.

Richard Gillis, UP: 22:57

It's interesting'cause you got sort of seeing it, you know, there's lots of case studies that are popping up, man. United being an obvious one where you've got this, the, you know, the inner sanctum, as you say, is the coach, sort of manager, the director of football, and then you've got this issue of the data guy, know, whether it's Dan Ashworth or someone or what do you do about that? And do you see those two roles? The analyst merging into the director of football? Is that always, I'm not, I'm not, I'm talking about the sports specific stuff.'cause there is a sort of crossover there. Or do you always need

Freddie Wilde: 23:32

I think

Richard Gillis, UP: 23:32

and

Freddie Wilde: 23:32

Yeah, I think, I mean, yes, in the, I think that there are, you know, pe people who work their way up to be like head of a, of analysis departments are, are often, minded in a way that would probably mean they would also be quite effective in director of football or director of cricket type roles. However, I think that there will always be, it's not like the, the role of analyst is just gonna disappear.'cause I think there's almost the, the role for you as an analyst is to represent what the evidence. is pointing to. So that might, might be just pure data or it might be data science. And you are there to be the voice or the mouse mouthpiece of that information. And you are meant to contribute that to the debate. Now the director of cricket or the director of football is then someone that you debate with and they will probably be quite analytically minded a lot of the time, because they just normally are. But I think that that relationship between them is essential. Like you won't, you won't see one disappear. It's a sort of back and forth and a to and fro. And I might say, look, the, the data says this and the DOC or the director of football might come back and say, yeah, I know, but we've gotta judge the human element of this. Or, you know, there are other factors at place, psychological factors that maybe the data isn't necessarily representing. So there's, there's give and take from both sides, I think. And that means that the, the debate between the two is essential.

Richard Gillis, UP: 24:45

It's like, it's a bit like I can see a sort of echo, you remember COVID, you, those press conferences and you go, you'd go over to Jonathan Van Tam and he would be saying, you know, and the, the minister would say, we'll be led by the science. And there, there was all of that

Freddie Wilde: 24:57

Yeah.

Richard Gillis, UP: 24:58

going on. So it's quite, there's a, there's an interesting dynamic.

Mike Jakeman: 25:00

I was gonna actually ask about the data itself because, I imagine that the, certainly on 2020, the amount that's available and the richness of that data must have changed a lot over the past decade. Which then means you can be perhaps more confident about the conclusions that it's giving you. Can you talk us a bit about where the data comes from, you know, how it's changed and how your relationship with it has, has over 10 years or?

Freddie Wilde: 25:26

There's a. I mean, cricket is, has always been rich in data in that that there are so many individual events. And so every single ball itself is a piece of data in various shapes or forms in the most simple form. It's just how many runs were scored off that ball. But obviously, there are, there's a lot more granular data that's come into the game in the last 10, 15 years and really that the rise of the accessibility of that data has been. A big reason why analysts have become more prominent. The main one really is bull tracking data. That is the, the sort of the most valuable data set that you can get as an analyst at this stage. That came in with the advent of Hawkeye. In the sort of early 21st century, but then increasingly towards the latter two thousands, when DRS became, like it had to, it had to exist in international cricket. It was a prerequisite every game, then had ball tracking data, from that match, whether it's the test match ODIT 20 international and in increasingly now as they've become bigger domestic T 20 leagues. And that data is again, the data that Nathan Lehman really used at the beginning of, of his career. I think that that sort of helped England gain an edge was by aggregating that data they could start to, to identify patterns in ways that play as played. You know, they can find weaknesses in, in opposition batters, or strengths in their own players, and harness that data for the better. So that's the first starting point, or, or the key cornerstone of the rise of analysis has been the fact that for every single bull, we can say the speed, the line, the length, how much it swung, how much it seemed, how much it spun. And obviously when that data becomes aggregated, you've got an extremely valuable. Overview of a player's ability, particularly when you're looking at opposition batters, you can say, well, this is where you should bowl. Or this is where you shouldn't bowl. And then the other. So that's, that's 0.1. The other thing that's, that's really interesting and, and has really accelerated the rise of analysis, I think has been of auctions and drafts and T 20 cricket more generally, all of which have probably necessitated more analysis than test cricket. So firstly, drafts and auctions, you need to know how good a player is and how much we should pay for it. That's a question or pay for them. That's a question that Cricket never had to really answer prior to the IPL or prior to these drafts. You just basically, you still, you try and work out who was good to pick your best test team or your best ODI team, but knowing the value of a player was a new thing. So quantifying that through various models, and I should say at this point, that there's a rise of data scientists as well as data analysts, and they're slightly different things. And the data scientists would build models to try and identify who was good and who wasn't. and then T 20 Cricket in particular because of its nature. So shorter game, the margins are finer. It's partly why it's more entertaining. The, the gains that can be achieved through analysis are more notable. If you play test cricket for five days, more often than not, the better team will just win because they probably have the better players or they play better. But in a T 20 game. A small change in your tactics can be the difference between victory and defeat. And obviously that can happen in close test matches or close ODI, but just by its nature, if you look at the margin of results, T 20 cricket is closer. So those things, bull tracking, technology, auction and drafts and the rise of T 20 in particular all have sort of made an analysis, certainly more prominent.

Mike Jakeman: 28:43

So, as we alluded to in our, AI assisted introduction, you have worked with and still do work with, the Oval Invincibles in hundred and r, CCB and the IPL. Can you tell us a little bit about what, when you are working with these teams, and you've got matches every three to four days, what the buildup, what the work actually involves? For like the, the time in between the matches leading up to kind of game day itself and.

Freddie Wilde: 29:08

Yeah, of course. Like.

Mike Jakeman: 29:10

How it.

Freddie Wilde: 29:10

So, so, I'll probably lean more on my experience with RCV'cause it's just slightly more recent and fresh in the memory in terms of how we went about it. But it was, and every team is different in how they do this. As I said, that no sort of one size fits all way of using an analyst. But what we would do at RCB is we would meet, you know, let's say we're playing a game on Saturday, a week before then the coaches, maybe even therefore one game ahead. We might have a game in between this, but we're preparing for the game, the following, you know, later in the week we would sit down as coaches. So there's me and then the batting coach, bowling coach, fielding coach, head coach, director of cricket. And we would have what we sort of called coaches or planning meetings. And for that, I, I will do a lot of prep work for those meetings. So I will prepare, very detailed sort of. Data slides, if you like, and footage to sort of illustrate the players' strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, where they like to score their runs, how they get out, where they can be slowed down. And there's a lot of different ways you can slice that data up. And I pull that together. It takes quite a lot of time. So that's done in advance, but we then sit down with the coaches, we go through that. I normally will lead it. But then a discussion will unfold where it sort of, it goes off in all kinds of directions. You might have someone say, well, can we go back to the game the other day? I feel like I noticed something from that match. And we start to, we probably talk about each player for, between 30 minutes. And sometimes it's five minutes, sometimes it might be 30 minutes, 45 minutes even for some players. And that meeting will total, you know, however many hours. And at the end of it, we are looking to try and drill it down to one or two bullet points of key information. So for example, for our opening bowler, I. Where's he gonna bowl? Is he gonna look to swing it in or away? What two fielders are he gonna have out, should he maybe use his bouncer? There'll be just little nuggets that we then pass over, to the players. And that's generally, again, different teams do it in different ways, but we did it often in like a one-on-one meeting, with me and the bowling coach and then the bowler, and we would sit down and talk through their options. And the two bullet points that we'd come up with would obviously be sort of the, the product of that meeting. And we do a similar thing for batters, although we wouldn't do one-on-ones with batters. It was more of a group discussion, but, but that's sort of the finer mat or opposition planning. But tap in, in that meeting as well, we'll talk about selection, which is sort of all tied into these things. There might be a certain weakness and it means we need to include a certain type of bowler. So it's that, it's that big coaching meeting that then drills down into a one-on-one bowling meeting and then a group batting meeting. That's how, how we do there. But there are lots of different ways of going about it.

Richard Gillis, UP: 31:44

It's fascinating. Sorry.

Mike Jakeman: 31:46

On that,

Richard Gillis, UP: 31:46

Mike. I've got, yeah.

Mike Jakeman: 31:48

a quick one. So on, you mentioned there's a whole spectrum of different ways in which teams work, with analysts more or less integrated to me that the RCB example you've given us sounds at the integrated end of the spectrum. Is that, is that fair?

Freddie Wilde: 32:00

that. So that's, and that's partly why it's a better example.'cause there are other teams where I might have done less and that sort of shows what you can do at one end of the spectrum. I'm not, I don't think it's like OTTI would, I would never sort of say we, we were doing a lot of meetings or we would spend a lot of time preparing, but that was the way that the guys who run that team wanted to do it. But I would agree that that is slightly towards the integrated side.

Richard Gillis, UP: 32:24

I've got a question about the auction. F. First of all, what's it like? I mean, you sort of see snippets of behind the scenes during the auction. What just gimme a sense of, was it incredibly stressful, exciting, I can't imagine being in that environment.

Freddie Wilde: 32:39

it's, stressful and exciting, both in a positive way. I mean, you get nervous before the auction and just like you could imagine players getting nervous before a game, you know, a huge amount of prep goes into not only the auction, but firstly your retentions, which you decide how many players you're gonna retain. Sometimes you can only retain three or four in, in many auction years. You can retain as many as you want, but that's when the, the analysis work starts. And, you know, you've poured hours and hours of time and lots of thought and sometimes, yeah. meetings in, in, into this. Event. And then ultimately you sort of, then it starts and it's a bit, yeah, it's a bit like preparing for a, for probably for a big game or a big exam. And there is naturally, there are nerves. I remember when I did my first one, you're more nervous than I'm now it's a bit more familiar. Even just as the simple things, like you get to the table and you've gotta sort of find your plugs under the table, plug your laptop in, get your notebook. There's sort of food everywhere and you understand how all, you know, there's cameras, there's lights. You sort of get familiar with that. And the first time it's a bit like, whoa, this is kind of crazy. And then after a while it's just a sort of like, it's a bit like the same. I, first time I worked in a Dugout, the first time you get there you're like, whoa, this is mental. And now it just, it's just another day at the office kind of thing. It becomes increasingly. Common that said, because auctions only happen, you know, or drafts only happen once, twice a year. In, in the I P's case, you do one every year. You know, I, I've done four now, whereas I've been involved in 50, 60, 70 games. So there's still, there's still a novelty factor to them and they're certainly, nerve wracking on the day. But if you've done your prep you are, you are well organized, then actually generally, hopefully you just follow your plan rather than having to be too nimble. Sometimes you need to be nimble. But, we're lucky at RCV, we've got a really good group of, coaches and and director of cricket who are very organized. And I generally never go into it thinking we're not prepared,

Richard Gillis, UP: 34:28

There's a differentiation question in my mind in terms of what's the different difference when everyone's got the, has everyone got the same data? Is one question. Are you making better decisions and, and are you judged on, you know, in football, again, the obvious analogy, you know, I live in Brighton where the story of the last five years has been, it's been an analyst's story. Essentially it's been, Tony Bloom knows something'cause he's in betting and he's got this source model that identifies players around the world and sells'em to Chelsea. All of that carries with enormous credit to whoever's in your job is the same scenario. Is the return on investment in your job linked to the player acquisition question?

Freddie Wilde: 35:15

Well, well, first I say just with regards to the last point, the, the area where an analyst. Can make most difference. Or to be honest, anyone involved in strategy for a team is at the auction table. Like if, if you were to ask the biggest reason why we, uh, or why, why teams win in, in T 20 Cricket, it's because they compile good teams. which is, you know, part of the skill. And then obviously then you have to go out there and win the games of cricket. But if you are an analyst seeking to make a difference, it's when you are building the team or involved in building the team that you can make the biggest gains. So it's a hugely important event. Does everyone have the same data? Yes and no. In that you've got access to the same. Data, but the data science and the modeling on top of it is where the difference comes in. I think at the moment,

Richard Gillis, UP: 36:00

Okay.

Freddie Wilde: 36:01

there are some data sources which other teams might have access to or some teams might not. Of like finer details and we might come onto it. But things like field a positioning, for example at the moment is cricket is a data source that is beginning to come in, but not everyone might have, have their hands on it. It probably doesn't make that much of a difference to the recruitment. It's probably more of a match day thing. That's where that has value. So I think the, the models that people build and there are lots of different companies involved in, doing that kind of thing, are generally drawing upon the same data sets. It's what you do with the data and that's where the data science really becomes valuable, that has real value. But also I think as well, there's an element of overcomplicating some of the auctions like. You can have fantastic data science that might be able to identify really good future prospects or undervalued talent. But like sometimes a good auction is a lot more simple than that. It might just be around how you spend your money, how you distribute your money through your playing. 11. The extent to which you go to certain limits and almost just how like calm you can be in terms of trying to assemble a team that has strengths across various disciplines. It might be that that, that someone has the best auction sometimes is just that rather than some, another team who might have a super smart algorithm that can identify players that maybe we had missed. That's great, but it might not end up with a team being as well-rounded as someone else. And I think sometimes common sense goes a long way, particularly in the IPL where there's still a lot of emotion involved at a lot of teams.

Richard Gillis, UP: 37:33

Yeah, it's fascinating.

Mike Jakeman: 37:36

I'm really interested in this idea about, the knowledge we have of 2020 becoming so much richer because when you first got involved in this, part of the demand, I think, for analyst was because we still weren't really sure how to win 2020 games because lots of the metrics that we were using for test and one day cricket just weren't appropriate anymore. I think you might have written about this in your, book of the year, winning

Richard Gillis, UP: 38:00

Which

Mike Jakeman: 38:00

with.

Richard Gillis, UP: 38:01

Claude mentioned, but we did, we didn't mention we, we glossed over. I dunno why we did that, but

Mike Jakeman: 38:05

Yeah, we should, we should give that, uh, book. It's, it's due. But the, the point being that we've got a much richer understanding now of, of 2020, partly because we've just got so many more years of data. What I'm fascinating. Can you think of any examples of where the data has kind, where you've kind of changed your mind over the years on like a key aspect of how this works, of like what you need to be pursuing, what you might give greater weight to now than you perhaps did before as a result of the fact that we just know more about it?

Freddie Wilde: 38:34

Yeah, I mean, one area that I think is still. Evolving is, so for obviously the, the last five, 10 years, I've seen a rapid growth in the number of T 20 tournaments that there are around the world. And I think about let's say 10 years ago, let's just use that as an example, or 2016, which I think quite often when I've been talking about it in the past, I've used that as kind of a watershed moment for analysis. From that point onwards, it started to become prominent. Around about then if you started looking at sort of the T 20 leagues around the world, there'd be the big bash, the CPL, the IPL, the T 20 blast. There was the PSL there probably four, five tournaments. Now, generally, they were all of pretty good standards and like the best overseas players would probably go and play in most of them. You'd see them travel around the world and play. Generally it's the same sort of cast of players playing and I think it was a bit easier to be quite confident if you just aggregated the numbers from those tournaments. Let's just say the I-P-L-B-B-L-P-S-L. Blast and CPL, those five, if you aggregated them, you could be like, well, if players doing well in these tournaments, they're a pretty good player. Now because of the rapid growth of number of leagues that there are, you'll see there's a far greater range of, of, standards from the IPL at the top to leagues like the MLC in America or the ILT 20 in the UAE, where you can have some of the world's very best players playing alongside in the ILT twenties case. Some United Arab Emirates cricketers, who have, might be quite talented, but really are, you know, they're nowhere near in the same league as, as you know, the other, the Rashid Khans or Andre Russells, who they're playing alongside. So what you find is that there's a massive golf between the good players and the bad players in a lot of these leagues. And therefore if you're now starting to look just in aggregate at these major leagues, it's a lot harder for you to say, this player is really good, or this player is really bad based only on their data. You need to do slightly more work to understand. Which leagues they've played in. And even then, you know, a hundred in the MLC might be, you might score almost all those runs off USA cricketers who haven't really played outside of America. Or you might score all of them off international bowlers if it's a particularly strong, bowling attack who've played around the world in various leagues. So I, that is a really interesting area and I think lots of other sports grapple with this is like trying to benchmark what is good, you know, what, what is a hundred in the MLC actually worth? And you have to get quite granular into the data and say, well, who did he face? What was the match situation? And that is an area that's become harder. I, in all honesty, I think it's actually harder to say now who the best 15 T 20 players in the world are than it was 10 years ago because of the fact that there is now just so many different tournaments and the standards vary so massively from over to over, let alone game to game.

Richard Gillis, UP: 41:22

Yeah. This is a while ago, but I, we had Mo Bobat on, and he, there's something he mentioned that I, I, I was really struck, stuck with me, which is, we were talking about the bits that da that that data find hard and it, you get to attitudinal And I was asking him about, you know, the sort of career path of, and I'm trying to think of A good example, you'll put me right. But, you know, a someone who is a, looks like a traditional match, opening bat if there, if there ever is such a thing anymore, a a, a, you know, a sort of classic 2020 player and one of the things he said was actually, it's not, it's less technique, it's more attitudinal, it's more about their relationship with risk, for example, might be one lens into that. And I wonder what you think about that in terms of just the bits of the puzzle that we don't yet know or you think, okay, I might be getting an inkling here and whether or not the next phase we'll try and get to that. Or whether that's always gonna be a bit sort of

Freddie Wilde: 42:26

Yeah, well it's good that you use MO as the example because obviously he's my director of cricket at RCB. So the, the discussion earlier that I was talking about between the analyst and the DOC, given what MO is just, or what Mo said to you on the podcast and what you've just recalled is a perfect illustration of the kind of conversations that go on. So I might say, well, look, this player's fantastic. These are his numbers. They look really good. He's done really well here, here and there. And then Mo will come back with a little bit of the psychological side of things. and that is a debate that will continue. And I think, I read the book about, Liverpool winning the Premier League, how to win the Premier League recently, where they talked about similar debates that go on, you know, there's the weighing up of the data versus the sort of slightly harder to measure. Personal stuff now, or psychological stuff as well. Now, ideally we will get to a point where we can measure that, but I still think, I'm probably speaking out of turn here, it's not my area of expertise, but I feel like it's going to be very difficult that we, for us to get to a point where the data on that stuff replaces just basic human intuition or interpretation of, you know, I sit down and have a conversation with a player and get a feeling for how they are. That is worth a hell of a lot and it's gonna be very difficult to replace that with data. That's not to say it won't happen, but, I think the getting to that point is, was probably still away. Away.

Richard Gillis, UP: 43:41

And there's, there's a, a slight build on this before I let Mike back in. Is that, again, this is from Mo the conversation with Mo, he re he talks about the Dave Brailsford, I'm sure you've talked to about this, but the sport and winning, winning with style question. So there's a sport and entertainment angle here and the idea being you've got like a two by two grid. You are winning and with style you are losing with style you are losing. style. That's the, you know, the and then you are sort of winning and, you know, Marino won Neil type thing. So there's a, there's a sort of, the question is that lens because you, you've obviously got football teams who are then saying, right now we want to be, it's the galactic argument, you know, and or it's a, fans want us to play in a certain way. And quite often it's, it's a conversation that's driven through the personality of the manager. So I'm a Spurs fan. You can imagine I have this conversation all day, every day about the Conte years, the Marino years versus the pot years and the, all of that stuff. A lot of it is, just stories. But I'm, what I'm interested in, is there a desire the auction, not necessarily with RCB, but just around the place to be a team of a certain style that plays in a certain way, and therefore that's driving their acquisition. It's not just about winning, losing.

Freddie Wilde: 45:02

Well, yeah, I mean the sort of the answer that if Mo did listen to this, that he'd probably agree with, which is that, quite often winning and losing, you start with a sort of, how we play is sort of central to that. So you, you want, rather than associating too much with to do with whether you win or whether you lose, you sort of start with the start of play that you think might give you the best chance of winning. And I guess what you are drawing attention to there is also, is it entertaining? And then you try and build that team and that vision and hopefully the results flow off the back of that. I guess what you are getting at is like, to what extent do you factor in the, like, entertainment side of it, or how much do you want to play in a certain way that that is, you know, maybe more exciting to watch than another way? Quite often in sport, and I think this has been written about quite often elsewhere. Have found that teams who play a more attacking form of, of the sport often are more successful anyway. And if we're just, and that's only if I'm purely equating attack with entertainment, which I think generally is the case. I know that you get those niche hipsters who like to say that they enjoy the, you know, gritty, nil nil or even sometimes a low scoring T 20, which I do agree can be good. But like on the whole, I think most people want to see goals and they want to see runs. And they're the things which people equate with entertainment. But quite often you'll find, I think that the evidence has been that playing score more runs or to score more goals is generally better. I think we've seen that quite a lot recently in football. If you look at the likes of Man City and Liverpool, they score a lot of goals these days. They play attacking free flowing football and in white bull cricket in particular. cricket may be different, although obviously B Ball is kind of challenging that with the way that England are playing right now. But in T 20 and in short form cricket, we've seen generally as well, the most successful teams are typically the teams who play with, the most aggression. And that might necessarily, in bowling might translate into taking wickets. It might not, you know, I'm not just talking about run scoring there, but being an attacking team that hit boundaries and take wickets probably gonna be good for your results on the whole. And I think that, so I think we'll see in the next few years that. The successful teams generally are the more watchable ones. Interestingly, historically in T 20 Cricket, probably 10, maybe a little bit longer ago, 10 years ago, there were a few teams who managed to build success on a slightly more attritional style of play. We saw Chenai, super Kings who were successful at the beginning of the IPL played on lower scoring wickets and, made a sort of name out of being able to win in those conditions. And Perth Scorches in the Big Bash were similarly successful doing a similar thing. And there is argue, there are arguments to sort of support the idea that playing that style is slightly more sustainable. But I think in the last couple of years we've seen, particularly in the IPL scoring rates rise massively. And teams who can't keep up with that style of play have generally been found out. So the game is moving in a direction where who win are generally more entertaining, I think, which is probably good for, broadcasters and fans as well.

Mike Jakeman: 47:55

Speaking of teams that win, this feels like a good opportunity to point out the fact that RCB did, of course, win the I this year. And of course you were instrumental in, giving. One of his probably in his top 10 best cricket moments of his career, Not top five.

Freddie Wilde: 48:11

Instrumental, but part of it, yeah.

Mike Jakeman: 48:13

yeah. So from an analytics point of view, obviously this is only one of the many factors that feeds into it. When you look back on this season as a, as a success, when other things that you think, yes, like this, this was a good call, this was a contributing factor. This is something I want to try and emulate next.

Freddie Wilde: 48:31

Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, I won't sort of go into to too much detail on, on the finer things, but I think that there's quite a broad story, which to be honest, you know, has been told already with regards to this season and what happened with RCB and, and that is that historically, RCB have been a team who have become renowned for. heavily in one or two players, quite often, star studded batters at the top of the order and neglecting other areas of the team. And, and to be fair, they were a hell of an entertaining side for a team who lost a lot. You know, that was part of the allure of them as a franchise was, you know, they were very watchable but maddeningly frustrating in that they couldn't sort of get across the line. But what, you know, in simple terms, and again, it's not rocket science, I don't think I'm sort of revealing anything great here to say that the way that we constructed the team this year was different. and Mo Bobat was on the record of saying that after the auction we wanted to do things differently. And, we spent our money more evenly. We didn't invest in two or three star players. We, obviously had Vera who was a retention. But the money that we spent at the auction was a lot more evenly distributed through the players, and it was a lot more evenly distributed. Across batting and bowling. And I think, also across domestic and overseas. So really the, the story of RC B's struggle historically was of imbalance. They would spend a lot of money on players at the top. They'd probably spend a lot of money on overseas guys, and they wouldn't spend a lot of money on bowling. And the main thing that we did this year at the auction was seek to address that imbalance. And it was a, it was a more balanced spend if you look at the way that the squad was built. So again, it it not rocket science or not revealing any great secret, I think,'cause it's something that a lot of people have already spoken about. But that was a key shift in the way that the team was compiled versus in other years. And, you know, it's probably one of the reasons why we were. I wouldn't like to say why we won it, because I think at the end of the day, like the IPL is won in a one-off game that could go either way, but it gave us the best opportunity to, to get there. It probably helped us finish in the top two, which is massive in the IPL'cause you get a double shot at the final in terms of the playoff structure. And at that point, you know, where it goes back to the work that I said. if you have a good auction, you put yourself in that position to then have a tilt at it. Come the big day when you get to the final. And then, you know, this time we were able to get over the line and hopefully it's the first of many.

Mike Jakeman: 50:49

I wanted to kind of this onto what comes next in terms of the role, the data that's used, how 2020 Cricket in particular is gonna change. I've got a kind of personal hypothesis, which is that in. An unspecified amount of time, maybe 10 years may take longer, but I feel like India should be dominating 2020 Cricket the way that, for decades, Americans have dominated the NBA because they host the competition that matters. They have, if they're doing this right, they should be investing lots of this money in producing talent pathways. They have the biggest talent pool you can possibly imagine. And I, I wonder if we're starting to see some of the seeds of that coming through with some of the players, young Indian players we've seen in the last couple of years. Feel free to take that apart if you like, but I'm interested in what your, what you think about.

Freddie Wilde: 51:38

I mean two things. One, I broadly agree in that, India the fact that the IPL is so central to the, the modern game and is obviously based in India and eight Indians play in every team versus four overseas players. Obviously it's 12 now with the impact sub, that means that that young Indian players and particularly young Indian batters are, you know, immensely focused on T 20 Cricket and they are extremely good at it. And I was, I was still working for England earlier this year when, when we were on the wrong side of a, of a four one thrashing in, in, in the T 20 series there. And an eyeopening, well, not eyeopening because I'd seen it in the IPL, but kind of a. It rammed home, the extent of quite how talented some of these young players are. And I think that we will see India producing more and more outstanding T 20 batters in particular bowling, I think maybe less so. It's a very difficult place to bowl in White bull cricket, India. The pitchers are flat, the grounds are tiny, and you're having to bowl to these very good batters, which is difficult in of itself. So, so I think that we will see India being something of a talent factory, very, very high quality players, whether they go on to dominate. The format is a more interesting question, I think because firstly, just as I've alluded to already, T 20 Cricket is more volatile. It's hard to win reliably and regularly, because of the fact that often games can swing on very fine margins. And I think that's what's great about it as a format. And I think you could say something similar, probably about Brazil in football, like Brazil probably produces loads of super talented players. It's obviously the national obsession. Loads of young kids wanna play football, but Brazil, whilst they have obviously historically won lots of World Cups, haven't now won one since 2002. So it's, it can, translating talent into results is sometimes a little bit more difficult. And I think T 20 lends itself to hopefully being unpredictable. They'll win more than they lose, but they might not win every World Cup.

Richard Gillis, UP: 53:39

I've just got a slight bill.'cause I do wanna bring, well bring us to a close, but there is a, and again, it's a sort of build on Mike's thing, a future gazing thing. But, and we mentioned AI and I'm not, we're not gonna get into a whole AI conversation, but it is the thing that's hanging over this, you know, the whole every conversation about tech and sport. So there is this worry again, beyond where big are getting bigger and data question amplified by ai, whatever form that takes gonna make that division even more. So you need more money, you need more Freddy's, you need more, uh, just expertise. And so you are gonna see a sort of bifurcation. Now, I don't know whether that ha, that won't happen within the IPL, but certainly you could see it happening the IPL and everything else. Or you can see, you know how that works. And you see, again, football is an obvious analogy where you're getting rich clubs with huge great rooms full of analysts against teams that don't have that capability. So you've got that sort of disparity. There's a sort of optimism, pessimism question. The other bit to it is that when you talk to people in Formula One, they're saying actually they're controlling their world. So they can monitor this in a way that football, for example, can't. And I'm just trying to place cricket in this spectrum'cause football is the Wild West European football. man city wanna do it, they'll do it. No one's gonna stop them. Formula One Ferrari are limited there is a sort of ceiling around them. So there is a group decision making process. This is a whole different podcast for us to go and do. But what, what's your sense? Is that, is that a conversation that sort of big get bigger data? Is that a live, a real question.

Freddie Wilde: 55:32

Yeah, you are right. It's a fascinating topic. It's, I, look, I'm looking forward to you recording a podcast on this and listening to it in my, in due course. But it,

Richard Gillis, UP: 55:40

Freddy Ideas for podcasts, they fall off me like sweat. You know what I do? It's who I.

Freddie Wilde: 55:45

yeah, well there's not enough time in, in the year for all the ideas is there, but It's a great question and I mean, I guess on a. Sort of slightly zoomed out level. Like if we get to a point where teams are investing enormous money in analysis to the point to which it's making a massive difference to results, then I think that's quite cool. Because obviously it means that analysis is probably playing a big role and like it's central to decision making. and for what it's worth, I think we're quite a long way away from that. Just because I think that whilst there are, there is a lot of investment in analysis and in the space, particularly in the IPL, let's just use the IPL as the example. There is still a lot of inefficiencies in more basic decision making that can be achieved before. Like the guys with the best model will just win the season, win the IPL every time, like I said already. Like, you can have a great model, but you still can have a bad auction. It's about the application of that and the common sense that's being used, and sort of just the cricketing logic. So I think that there's a way to go to that point. Yes, it is interesting to sort of consider when we get further down the line whether, you know, essentially it's like, you know, whether the wealthiest teams will just be able to invest more money into certain areas and be more successful as a result. And, you know, the IPL has a salary cap for its players. It doesn't have one for analysts. It would be an interesting world if it did, but, but I guess what you're getting at is like, you know, the money that, let's say a Mumbai Indians who are probably the well they're owned by the world's 15th richest man, have got a huge amount of money. And if they wanted to, they could probably spend a lot of that, making sure they've got the best staff, the best analysis, the best models. But at the end of the day, like I said, that can only get you maybe top two in the league and you've still gotta go and win a game of T 20 Cricket, which remains volatile. And I think that's the best thing about I. The game is that I think even with the best models and the best science and data science and analysts behind the scenes, you can only control for so much. You knows reason that, you know, we do still see upsets in football as well. You know, man, city lost last night to, who was it? The Saudi Arabian Club? I can't remember off the top of my head. They've probably got a lot of money too, but the point being like, it, you can only control for so much. And I think that hopefully is a cause for optimism in that, you know, you can't just buy the trophy. I hope.

Richard Gillis, UP: 57:55

Yeah. Yeah. Listen, thanks so much Freddy. That's a really fascinating, I really enjoyed it. Mike. I, I mean, we've been talking about getting Freddy on and talking about this subject, really. I really enjoyed that. I think we got into some really interesting stuff.

Mike Jakeman: 58:07

There's one final question we need to ask Freddy, which is a continuation of a long running debate we have on here. You will have some firsthand insight. Rich is convinced that is moving to London to appear. You must have his phone number on your phone. He is must, I mean, close personal friend of yours. What's the.

Freddie Wilde: 58:28

you want me to persuade him to play in the hundred? Is that, is that

Richard Gillis, UP: 58:32

this is just an, this is, you know, he's bought, he's bought a house. I know whose house he's bought.

Freddie Wilde: 58:41

Yeah, he, I can't, I can't reveal that he has any plans to play in the a hundred. I think we might have to write, increase the salary cap a bit more until that, that, becomes a possibility. But I, I'd love to see it. I'd love to see it, but, yeah, I don't think it's imminent. But maybe not something I've missed.

Richard Gillis, UP: 58:56

It might be that I'm wrong, I'm not, you know, this is, this is a, an astonishing revelation, but, you know, I, I might have been given dodgy information, but, Hey, ho, listen, go. Well, Freddy, good luck. Whatever comes next.

Freddie Wilde: 59:08

Thank you.

Richard Gillis, UP: 59:09

Yeah. Yeah. We'll keep a close eye,

Freddie Wilde: 59:11

Brilliant. Yeah, we keep listening.