Home advantage
How much is home advantage worth in cricket?
A batter from the subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan) can cross to a neighbour’s ground and average exactly what he does at home. For a game that talks so much about home comforts, that is an odd place to start.
These figures cover men’s internationals between the 12 Full Members played in one side’s country: Tests since December 2001, ODIs since 2002 and T20Is since 2005, up to this October. Every win share here allows for how strong both sides were at the time, so what remains is the pull of home on its own, and on that basis the home side wins 66% of Tests between evenly matched sides.
Home advantage works like a fare, and the usual view is that the gap between two countries’ pitches sets the price. The steepest trip takes a subcontinent batter to SENA (South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia). Similar pitches shrink the home edge in Tests and T20Is but barely touch it in ODIs, and the Ashes carry an edge that pitches alone cannot account for. The betting market, for its part, has rated Test hosts a little too highly.
How big is home advantage in ODIs and T20Is?
Hosts win 61% of ODIs between evenly matched sides, and the edge narrows again in T20Is, where they win 54%. Over 20 overs, home is worth only a little.
Batting averages follow the same slope. Comparing the same players’ averages at home and away, Test batters lose 15% on tour. In ODIs the drop is 9%, and in T20Is it is a mere 4%.
So the longer the match, the more the visiting batters struggle. Bowlers travel better, and the same bowlers’ Test averages rise by only 10% away from home. Batting carries the bigger share of the home edge, and it is also the part most affected by where a side tours.
Which away tours are hardest for batters?
Subcontinent batters have the hardest trip of all, to SENA, where they average 27% less than they do at home. Put another way, more than a quarter of the runs they would make on their own grounds go missing on those tours.
SENA batters have a gentler time in the subcontinent, where they average 17% less than at home. For all the talk of turning pitches, they lose a good deal less on that trip than batters making it the other way.
The surprise is inside SENA itself. When SENA batters visit another SENA country, their average drops by 16%, almost as much as in the subcontinent, while subcontinent batters touring their neighbours lose nothing at all. The four SENA countries are usually spoken of as one group, yet their batters struggle in each other’s countries nearly as much as they do in Asia.
Do subcontinent spinners or SENA seamers suffer more away?
A SENA pace bowler in the subcontinent sees his Test average rise by 24% on tour, while a subcontinent spinner in SENA sees his rise by 41%, so of these two journeys it is the spinner’s that hurts more.
So the subcontinent loses on both counts in SENA. Its batters score fewer runs, and its spinners, the bowlers who carry most of the work at home, concede far more runs for each wicket. On tour a subcontinent side has to take its wickets some other way, and its seamers are left to carry a much bigger load than they do on their own grounds.
Does home advantage shrink when the pitches are similar?
In Tests it does, and the gap between the two kinds of pitch is a wide one. Spinners bowl far more of the balls in the subcontinent than in SENA, so a subcontinent spinner leaves home as his side’s main weapon and tours countries where the seamers do most of the work. When a side crosses that divide the home edge is at its biggest, and SENA sides at home to the subcontinent win 80% of the time.
The trip the other way is easier. Subcontinent sides at home to SENA win 66% of the time, which matches what the batting shows, since the journey to SENA costs touring batters more than the journey back does.
The white-ball formats split. In ODIs the pitches barely matter, and the home edge holds whoever is visiting. In T20Is the edge all but disappears between countries with similar pitches, where the hosts win 49% of the time, which fits the small batting drop in that format: a T20I batter loses little on tour to begin with, and a visitor who knows the conditions leaves the hosts nothing to lean on.
Has home advantage gone between subcontinent sides?
Subcontinent hosts have lost most of their Test edge over their neighbours since 2014. Before then they won 69% of Tests against other subcontinent sides, and since then they have won 51%, while SENA sides at home to other SENA countries have kept their edge about steady across the same years.
Across the whole period since 2001, subcontinent batters touring their neighbours have averaged the same as they do at home, so the batting alone says nothing about a change around 2014. The numbers don’t say why the hosts’ edge fell away when it did. What happened around 2014 to make a neighbour’s ground feel so much like home for the visitors?
Which Test series have the biggest home advantage?
Even where the pitches are most alike, the hosts still win more often than they should. In Tests between England and New Zealand, the hosts won 61% of the time when the two sides’ strength alone predicted 51%, and India and Sri Lanka show a home lift of much the same size.
The Ashes go much further. In Tests between England and Australia, the hosts won 75% of the time when strength alone predicted 52%, about as big a lift as India enjoy at home to either of them, where far more spin is bowled. That makes the Ashes the odd one out, because both countries sit in SENA.
Australia v South Africa runs slightly the other way, with the hosts winning a little less often than strength alone predicted. It is one series and a modest gap, but it shows two SENA countries can meet without much of a home edge.
Strength aloneHosts won
Why is home advantage so big in the Ashes?
Pitches cannot be the whole answer. Spinners bowl only a small share of the balls in home Tests in both England and Australia, so on paper the conditions look much alike. Yet England’s batters average 20% less in Australia than they do at home, and Australia’s batters average 23% less in England, close to what subcontinent batters lose in SENA.
South Africa’s batters, touring the same Australian grounds, average only 3% less than at home. So something about the trip between England and Australia costs batters far more than the pitches would suggest, and one clear difference lies in the ball. Tests in England use the Dukes, which swings and seams for longer, while Tests in Australia use the Kookaburra, which does less once the shine goes and relies on pace and bounce.
An English batter raised on one ball meets the other in Australia, and an Australian batter meets the reverse in England. If home runs count for so much less on that trip, should the runs a batter has already made away from home weigh more when an Ashes party is picked?
Does the betting market overrate home sides in Tests?
Since May 2020, the Betfair exchange’s last prices before the start have given Test hosts a 64% chance in decided Tests, and they have won 59%. The gap sits with the favourites, who were given a 75% chance and won 69% of the time, while home underdogs won almost exactly as often as the market expected.
The draw was overrated as well, priced at 18% and coming up 13% of the time. Taken together, the market has expected strong home sides to win more Tests than they have, and more Tests to be saved than were.
Are home sides underrated in ODIs?
Priced to win 56% of ODIs and winning 59%, home sides in the 50-over game have been rated a little too low.
All of that gap comes from the underdogs. Home underdogs were given a 34% chance and won 44% of the time, while home favourites won exactly as often as priced. A home side starting an ODI as the outsider has turned out to be a good deal more dangerous than the market believed.
T20Is are the one format the market has got right, with hosts priced at 54% and winning 55%. In the shortest format, where the home edge is smallest, the prices have kept pace with it.
Market's chanceWon
So how big is home advantage in cricket?
Home advantage in cricket belongs above all to Tests, and above all to the batters. Bowlers take their craft abroad without losing too much of it, while batters leave a good part of theirs behind, and the longer the match runs, the more that loss tells.
Pitches explain much of the home edge, but not all of it. The trip between England and Australia costs batters about as much as journeys to far stranger conditions, and the two balls are an obvious suspect. Perhaps they are only part of the reason, but they are the clearest difference between two countries whose pitches look so alike.
The fairest verdict is that home advantage is a measure of what the visitors have not seen before, and it is at its strongest when a touring batter has five days to be tested by it. A subcontinent batter at a neighbour’s ground has nothing new to learn, while an English batter in Australia is still learning.