Ascent to help cricket authorities harness data analytics

07 October 2022 Consultancy.uk

Consulting firm Ascent has announced a new partnership with the England & Wales Cricket Board. The firm will help harness data to provide players and management with actionable insights.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is the national governing body of cricket in England and Wales. Formed in 1997, the board oversees all levels of cricket in England and Wales, including the national teams: England Men (Test, One Day International and T20I), England Women, England Lions (Men's second tier), Physical Disability, Learning Disability, Visually Impaired, and Deaf.

As the world of sport increasingly turns to analytics to enable improvement, the ECB is seeking to deliver data visualisation and mobile application development services to help boost the women’s game in particular. As part of a strategic ECB initiative to harness the potential of data to improve performance in women’s cricket, it has tapped Ascent – a professional services firm specialising in technology and transformation.

Ascent to help cricket authorities harness data analytics

Founded in 2005, the UK-headquartered firm employs more than 400 experts across Europe, in 14 different countries. Ascent works with over 150 organisations in the UK, Europe and North America, including BrewDog, The Crown Estate, Centrica (Hive), Bosch, BT, BDO and - through its acquisition of Mango Solutions in 2020 - GSK, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Office of National Statistics and Hiscox.

Looking ahead, Ascent will help to roll out a new mobile app and dashboard will provide players and management with real-time actionable insights. This will include a 360-degree player insight to supporting continual optimisation of performance and management of the players; and a single intuitive dashboard with custom role-based views that correlates data across medical, coaching, physiological, wellness and competitive match scenarios.

Rich Pugh, Chief Data Scientist at Ascent, commented, "We love working with organisations who have a clear vision and purpose we can really engage with and support with our technical expertise. Empowering ECB and the elite women’s team with the right data and insights today helps set the stage for future generations of cricketers. As a data project, it is fascinating in its own right but it becomes even more compelling when you consider the positive sporting and inclusivity outcomes. It’s also a great first step towards future data-driven opportunity, like predictive performance and competition analytics. We’re very proud to partner with ECB and look forward to seeing the on-pitch impact of this brilliant initiative."

England Women cricket team is the current 50-over World Champions – the changes will help them build performance tuning decisions both in training and live match scenarios – while also serving a wider role of helping the ECB close the gap between women’s and men’s cricket. Championed by Jonathan Finch, Director of England Women’s Cricket, this initiative is a first for the women’s game and is set to deliver significant performance and efficiency benefits for the critical 2022 series calendar and beyond.

Jonathan Finch, Director of England Women’s cricket stated, “The women’s game is experiencing tremendous growth and ensuring that everyone in our pathway has a positive experience should underpin everything we do. The partnership enables us to understand more about the players and individualise the support we provide. Most importantly, from my perspective, is that we utilise the data to help players feel part of something special, giving them the environment to thrive as individuals and engage in their own development journey.”