Longitudinal Linear Mixed Effect Model: An Application in Analyzing Age Effects in Twenty20 Cricket

Though most of the cricketing fraternity opines that Twenty20 cricket is a game of young cricketers, yet the performance of senior cricketers in the different seasons of IPL seems to be comparable to that of the youngsters. Thus, this study tries to examine the effect of age on on-field performance of the cricketers in Indian Premier League. To quantify the performance of cricketers, a measure is developed utilizing the four prime skills of the game viz., batting, bowling, fielding and wicket keeping. Various cricketing factors are considered related to the performance of cricketers under the abovementioned skills. All these factors are normalized and accordingly adjusted by using appropriate weights on the basis of their relative importance. The performance measures are obtained for each cricketer separately in all the four seasons of IPL played so far, and the regression model with random regression coefficient has been applied to determine the effect of age on cricketers' performance. The results obtained from the regression model confirm that the on-field performances of the cricketers are positively associated with the age of the players.