Does Sri-Lanka's 3rd Rank Justify?

As ICC world cup has concluded nearly 25% of group stage matches, it’s about time when we try to predict the world cup semi-finalist.

Model Ranking			Official Ranking
Ind	1		NZ	1
Aus	2		Aus	2
NZ	2		SL	3
Eng	4		Pak	4
WI	4		WI	5
BL	6		Eng	6
Pak	7		Ind	7
SA	8		Bang	8
SL	9		SA	9
Afs	10		Afs	10

Let’s discuss the official ranking first- The official ranking is based on results till date and does not predict any future match outcome. It is also plagued by asymmetric world cup scheduling like India has just played a single match on the other hand Sri-lanka, has played three matches. Owing to this, official table tends to paint the flawed picture of team ranking and thus their probability of qualifying for semi-finals. Like, Srilanka ranked third after a wash-out against Pakistan and win against Afghanistan. Official ranking does not reward victory against strong team and make it par as victory against weak team.Of-course in due course of time the official ranking will start correcting it-self. Mean-while, this blog has developed a simple momentum based model, which will try to predict the better picture of team ranking.

Semi-finalist:

As per the model prediction-

Most likely to qualify: India, Australia, New Zealand, England and West-Indies in that order.

Might qualify: Pakistan, Bangladesh and South Africa in that order.

Very less likely to qualify: Sri-lanka and Afghanistan

Though, Pakistan and Bangladesh has both produced an upset. But they are still far from among most-likely list. They have to consistently beat better teams, which looks rather difficult but best of luck to them.

Disparity in Official ranking and Model Ranking:

A simple observation will suggest that there is significant disparity between the official ranking and model ranking. To quantify this dis-parity we have calculated absolute deviation between ranks of a team by official and model ranking. For example – Official ranking of Sri-lanka is 3 but model rank is 9, thus there is 6 ranks disparity. At the end of group stage we will publish final ranking disparity with ranking at various stages of tournament. Currently, total absolute disparity between two rankings is 22.