Student-built analytics: DeepCrease & ICR
An IIT‑KGP student released two cricket analytics tools—'DeepCrease' (shot‑likelihood heatmaps, control/risk metrics) and 'ICR' (a venue‑adjusted rating the author says explains 70%+ of IPL win variance)—and pitched them to coaches and analysts as practical intel shared shared. Both are presented as undergraduate‑scale projects that directly translate to match prep and player valuation work.
Omkar Walunj is listed as the author of the DeepCrease Streamlit/Hugging Face app and maintains a public GitHub repository that hosts ICR code and IPL‑2025 results. huggingface.co The Integrated Contextual Rating (ICR) described in the repository combines Venue‑Adjusted Performance, Win‑Probability‑Added, and a Role Stability Factor and publishes computed ICR/BICR values for IPL 2025 players. github.com The GitHub repo states the work was prepared for an MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (SSAC) abstract, and SSAC 2026 drew more than 2,500 attendees including coaches and analysts. github.com Multiple IPL franchises now list dedicated analytics roles on their support staff rosters, documenting the operational adoption pathway for metrics like ICR; mainstream coverage of IPL support staff lists highlights this shift. timesofindia.indiatimes.com Coverage of cricket’s “data revolution” cites concrete dugout/analysis examples (the KKR “54” episode) that show how top‑level teams route analytics into in‑match and tactical decisions. news18.com The Indian market shows active hiring for entry‑level sports/data analyst roles—Glassdoor indexed 118 open sports data analyst roles in India—while match‑analyst job templates list duties such as video breakdowns, model building, and opposition scouting. glassdoor.co.in Practical student projects demonstrated by the release include (a) reproducing DeepCrease shot‑likelihood heatmaps from ball‑by‑ball plus coordinate CSVs and deploying a Streamlit/Hugging Face demo, and (b) calculating ICR/BICR on a single‑season IPL dataset and comparing its explanatory power to simple averages; both approaches are shown in the author’s public spaces and repo. huggingface.co A published analytics write‑up applying ICR to an IPL squad (an “Optimised XI” case study) illustrates how a venue‑adjusted rating can be translated into auction/player‑valuation arguments for franchises and agents. theunseengame.substack.com
