Is there a home ground advantage in one-day cricket? Using sport as a catalyst for the study of statistics

The analysis of sport generally stimulates widespread interest but unfortunately a great deal of the statistical detail made available for public consumption is not as informative as it. could be. One area of sport that attracts constant discussion is home ground advantage. A team's perceived home ground advantage is generally considered to be a contributing factor to their winning potential when playing at home, Familiarity of conditions and home crowd support are just two factors that could contribute to a team's advantage on its home turf, As a consequence home ground advantage has undergone extensive analysis in a range of sports but the game of cricket has only attracted marginal interest. In this paper ',re will briefly explore a number of methods that can be used to investigate home ground advantage in one-day cricket and then specifically look at home ground advantage in the Australian domestic one-day cricket competition.