Once scoffed at, data analytics in sports has thrown up many opportunities

You might have often spotted him on your TV screens -- sitting in the South African dugout with a laptop in front of him -- animatedly discussing the finer points of their game with players. From AB de Villiers to Faf du Plessis and Dale Steyn to Kagiso Rabada, he was the most sought-after man before, during and after the game as data analytics helped them work on their weaknesses and exploit opponents’ shortcomings.

Prasanna Agoram is one of the top performance analysts (video analyst, if you like), a profession that has become integral to sport today. But when he started this journey more than 20 years ago, you could count the likes of him on the fingers of one hand. The job itself was scoffed at by coaches and players who either didn’t have the proficiency to understand the analytics or chose to trust their own experience and expertise rather than the data stored in a machine.

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“I started this journey in 2002 and I can’t remember how many analysts even existed at that time,” recalls Prasanna in an interaction with DH. “It was difficult to convince coaches that there was space for a laptop in the dressing room. It took me four years from there to get into the India U-19 team. Till the late 2000s, a majority of the Ranji Trophy teams didn’t have analysts. Now, you can see that even a state U-16 team has an analyst with it. Definitely, there are more opportunities and the remuneration has become better too,” he says when you ask him if it has become a viable career option.

Prasanna was an aspiring cricketer in the early 1990s, having represented Tamil Nadu at the Under-19 level. Having shared a dressing room with Sadagopan Ramesh, Sreedharan Sriram and Hemang Badani - all former India players - it soon dawned on him that he wasn’t destined to play for India because, by his own admission, he wasn’t good enough to make the grade. But there was no way he could live without cricket. So, he became a qualified umpire which kept his association with the game going. But then again, it wasn’t taking him anywhere; he wanted to be the best in what he did and his good academic background (an engineering degree in electronics and a Masters in computer science), coupled with the passion for the game, came to his aid.

As happenstance, when former India coach John Wright was looking for a software to analyse his players’ and opponents’ strengths and weaknesses in 2001 with a Bengaluru-based software giant, Prasanna jumped at the opportunity. He worked day in and day out to develop the software and visited the National Cricket Academy as often as he could to present his product to whoever he would come across at the academy. He eventually landed a job with the NCA before going on to become a celebrity in his own right.

Performance analysis is a growing market and the opportunities to make a career out of it are limitless, feels Prasanna.

“Sport is evolving every day,” he begins. “With my experience of working with cricket, hockey and tennis at the highest level, analysis plays a major role not only in decoding the opponents’ strengths and weaknesses, but most importantly our own team players’ strengths and weaknesses. If anyone believes that coaching can still be done without video analysis, I am sure there won’t be any benefit from that. Analysing a player frame by frame is the best way to find solutions to get the best out of a player in any sport.”

Basic understanding of the game, Prasanna says, is important to become a successful analyst.

“Unfortunately, these days, only former players are given importance when it comes to coaching. Someone who hasn’t played the game should definitely have the coaching certification apart from interest, passion and knowledge of the game.”

There is a huge demand for Indian analysts, as is evident when you see most dugouts either in franchise cricket or international events. According to Prasanna, Indians do enjoy an edge in this field and particularly so in cricket.

“Every single cricket match, be it any league, is telecast live in India and people in India watch cricket nonstop for 24 hours. Also, the backend service providers in India will have footage from every single cricket match in the world and that’s also a reason (why Indians are preferred).”