When it comes to fantasy cricket, making strategic decisions during team selection is key to your success. To develop a sound strategy, you need to understand and adapt to the external factors influencing a real-world match.
The weather and pitch conditions are two of the most vital factors you need to evaluate properly and correctly to choose a good team. These insights will help you make data-driven decisions to boost your chances of winning.
In this guide, we will break down how weather and pitch conditions affect cricket matches and how you should use these factors in your fantasy team selection strategy. We’ll also show you how you can do this quickly using a fantasy cricket lineup builder called 11Wizards.
Impact of Weather Conditions
Weather conditions are one of the most dynamic factors influencing cricket. They can significantly affect the behaviour of the ball, the playing surface, and, ultimately, the players’ performances.
Let’s look at some of the more common types of weather conditions.
Overcast Weather Conditions
Overcast skies often bring high humidity and strong winds, which aids swing bowling. The moisture in the air allows bowlers to generate greater lateral movement, making it challenging for batters to play accurately. For example, in England the weather conditions are often overcast, which is one of the reasons that bowlers like James Anderson and Stuart Broad have such excellent records at home. Both of them have relied on swing over pace throughout their careers.
Fantasy Cricket Tip: For matches played in overcast weather conditions, you should lean towards including more swing bowlers in your lineup. They are likely to extract the most advantage and pick up wickets, winning you crucial fantasy points in the process.
Hot and Dry Weather Conditions
Dry conditions typically favour spin bowlers. As the pitch heats up and loses moisture, it begins to crack, creating opportunities for spinners to extract sharp turns off the surface. These conditions also offer consistent bounce, providing batters with more predictability when playing shots.
Hot and dry weather is more common for matches played in the subcontinental countries like India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan etc. That’s the reason you’ll often find two or even three spinners in teams’ lineups, and also one of the reasons why 4 of the top 5 Indian wicket takers in test cricket are spinners (Anil Kumble, Ravichandran Ashwin, Harbhajan Singh and Ravindra Jadeja).
Fantasy Cricket Tip: On hot, dry days, you should consider including spinners and technically sound batters who can handle spin bowling effectively. Players from the subcontinent have historically played spin better than players from other parts of the world, especially in subcontinent conditions.
Pitch Conditions and Their Influence
The pitch is the stage on which every cricket match is played, and its characteristics can vary significantly based on location, preparation, and weather. Understanding these nuances is key to building a well-rounded fantasy cricket team.
Flat Pitches
Flat pitches are a batter’s paradise. These surfaces offer little assistance to bowlers, making it easier for batters to score freely. Matches on such pitches often lead to high-scoring games. IPL games at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai or Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore often see totals exceeding 200 runs due to the batter-friendly pitch.
Fantasy Cricket Tip: For matches on flat pitches, consider stacking your team with top-order batters and power hitters who can capitalise on easy scoring opportunities.
Green Pitches
Green pitches, covered with grass, provide ample assistance to seamers. The extra grass adds moisture to the surface, resulting in more movement off the pitch. Batters often struggle to deal with the unpredictable movement of the ball. New Zealand’s green tracks have consistently helped seamers dominate Test matches.
Fantasy Cricket Tip: Include pacers with excellent seam and swing skills. Avoid batters with weak techniques against pace bowling in your lineup.
Turning Tracks
Turning tracks are ideal for spinners, offering sharp turn and variable bounce. Batters without strong defensive techniques often find it difficult to handle the unpredictable nature of spin bowling. Ravichandran Ashwin’s match-winning performances on Indian turning tracks underline the impact of spinners on such surfaces.
Fantasy Cricket Tip: Add spinners and batters who are adept at playing spin to your fantasy team. This combination will maximize your chances of earning points.
Hard and Bouncy Pitches
Hard pitches, like those in Australia, favor pacers who can extract extra bounce. While this can be a challenge for weaker batters, players with aggressive stroke play often thrive in these conditions.
Fantasy Cricket Tip: Select fast bowlers who can exploit bounce and batters with strong back-foot games.
Using Weather and Pitch Insights for Fantasy Team Selection
Armed with knowledge about weather and pitch conditions, here’s how you can translate these insights into actionable strategies for fantasy cricket:
Review Pre-Match Reports:
Check weather forecasts for rain, humidity, and temperature.
Look for pitch reports from reliable sources to understand surface behavior.
Adjust Player Selection:
Pick swing bowlers for overcast and green conditions.
Include spinners for dry, turning tracks.
Prioritise aggressive batters for rain-affected matches and flat pitches.
Align Captain and Vice-Captain Choices
Assign captaincy to players with a strong advantage in the given conditions (e.g., spinners on a turning track or swing bowlers in humid weather).
Vice-captains should complement your captain, ensuring a balanced strategy.
All this analysis sounds complicated and looks like a lot of work, right?
Don’t worry.
You can use a fantasy cricket prediction app like 11Wizards to get all this analysis at your fingertips.
11Wizards uses predictive analytics of millions of data points on players, venues, pitch and weather conditions to give you 4 key historical and 3 key predictive metrics, which factor in all of the above data.
The 4 key historical metrics are:
- Average Points Scored: Consider the average fantasy points a player has scored over the past two years, calculated based on the scoring rules of your selected app.
- Best XI %: The percentage of matches played in the past 2 years where a player was in the best possible fantasy team on this selected platform.
- Top Scorer %: The percentage of matches played in the past 2 years where the player scored the top fantasy points.
- Recent Performances: Analyse a player’s recent performances, including their scores in the last few matches, to gauge their current form and likelihood of performing well in upcoming games.
The 3 predictive metrics are as follows:
- Expected Points: The average number of points a player is expected to score, as analysed by 11Wizards’ algorithm.
- Best XI%: The chances of a player being among the best XI fantasy players for the upcoming match.
- Top Score%: The chances of a player being the top fantasy points scorer in the upcoming match.
These metrics are unique because they have a forward looking approach. You’ll only be able to find them on the 11Wizards App. They can prove to be the real difference makers in your team selections if you analyse them properly.
Let’s see how you can find these key measures for any upcoming match. We’ll be showing screenshots from the Play Store version of the app.
Download the 11Wizards App & Sign Up With Your Mobile Number
Choose an Upcoming Match by tapping on it (red box area)
Select an available contest for the match
Click on ‘Explore Player Research’
From the dashboard, choose the player for whom you want to see the metrics. We’ve gone for Nat Sciver in this case.
View all the key metrics on a single dashboard.
Conclusion
Weather and pitch conditions are two of the most influential factors in cricket, shaping match dynamics and player performances. By understanding these variables, you can make smarter decisions in fantasy cricket, boosting your chances of success.
Use the 11Wizards lineup builder app to improve your ability to analyse the expected performance of players, and thereby improve your team selections.
Fantasy cricket isn’t just about luck—it’s a game of strategy. Use weather and pitch insights to your advantage, and watch your fantasy scores rise.