Level is the playing field at World Twenty20

Even with the help of statistical formulas such as Impact Index, it is impossible to pick a winner at the upcoming World Twenty20 cricket tournament.

Such is the nature of the format, few had expected West Indies to win the World Twenty20 in 2012. Gemunu Amarasinghe / AP Photo

Before the tournament began, no one thought India were likely winners of the first World Twenty20 in 2007.

They had not even planned to take part in the tournament until just before it began. Pakistan, their opponents in that final, had also thought about not taking part.

Nobody picked Pakistan to win the next World Twenty20 in 2009. Partly because nobody would ever pick Pakistan to win a major event before they had at least made the final. But it was especially the case that time because they had a poor lead-up campaign.

Few would have thought England could win the World Twenty20 in 2010 in the Caribbean. A country that had never won a world title and had floated around limited-overs cricket disinterestedly for decades and seemed to view it more as a nuisance to be endured.

The latest World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka in 2012 was won by a West Indian team that had been winning nothing. Going by their record over the past 25 years it would be safe to say nobody saw that one coming.

The point to going over the history of the Twenty20 World Cup is that predicting a winner is fraught with the likelihood of being wildly inaccurate.

That is the lesson of the previous four tournaments: nobody can say with confidence how any team will fare and, least of all, who will win.

To say the format predicates a degree of unpredictability is not entirely true. Players and sides are increasingly coming to terms with the ideas, strategies and formulas that work in the shortest format of the game.

It is also true that internationally the format remains nascent. There just is not enough bilateral contests, or multi-nation tournaments outside the world event to really know how teams will perform.

India, for example, have played only one Twenty20 international since the start of 2013. Canada, Nepal, Hong Kong, Afghanistan and Kenya have all played more.

England, with just 13 matches, have played the most in that time. Three sides have played more Tests in the same period. From such a small pool, it is not possible to draw any reasonable observations.

The Twenty20 franchise leagues and tournaments around the world offer only an unreliable guide. Not enough can be gleaned from the standard of such competitions, despite a proliferation of international stars.

India’s players do not play in any league other than the Indian Premier League (IPL); Pakistan’s players participate everywhere except the IPL.

It offers no insight into how their players will approach the opening game on Friday and how the various individual battles will go. It reduces observers to educated guesses.

One immediate observation, from looking at the two groups, is how lopsided they are. Group 2 contains three of the four semi-finalists and the winner from 2012: Pakistan, Australia and the West Indies.

The other sides will be a qualifier and India. Even without form to go on, that feels like too much wattage to put in one group.

For anything more, it is worth looking at the findings of Impact Index. Impact Index is an alternative – and some say fresher – statistical way of looking at the game. Their findings measure the impact a player makes in a match (or over a career) and the beauty of it is that they contextualise statistics.

So an impact finding includes a comparison of contributions by one player to those made by other players in the match, the quality of opposition and the situation of the game among other things.

It is far more nuanced than just batting and bowling averages, which are increasingly meaningless in the format.

The Impact Index preview rates Pakistan and the West Indies as favourites by some distance, and then Australia.

Instinctively that sounds about right. Both those sides have won it once and Pakistan have never failed to make it to the semi-finals, while the West Indies have a potent mix of uncomplicated power-hitters, unorthodox spinners and all-rounders.

Australia have serious momentum behind them – in other formats admittedly – but no side is as hot right now.

The only problem is that only two of these three will get to the semi-finals. If none of them win it, well, you did not read it here.

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