A Balanced Squad for Indian Premier League Using Modified NSGA-II

Selecting team players is a crucial and challenging task demanding a considerable amount of thinking and hard work by the selectors. The present study formulated the selection of an IPL squad as a multi-objective optimization problem with the objectives of maximizing the batting and bowling performance of the squad, in which a player’s performance is estimated using an efficient Batting Performance Factor and Combined Bowling Rate. Also, the proposed model tries to formulate a balanced squad by constraining the number of pure batters, pure bowlers, and all-rounders. Bounds are also considered on star players to enhance the performance of the squad and also from the income prospects of IPL. The problem in itself is treated as a 0/1 knapsack problem for which two combinatorial optimization algorithms, namely, BNSGA-II and INSGA-II, are developed. These algorithms were compared with existing modified NSGA-II for IPL team selection and three other popular multi-objective optimization algorithms, NSGA-II, NSDE, and MOPSO-CD, on the basis of standard performance metrics: hypervolume, inverted generational distance, and number of Pareto optimal solutions. Both algorithms performed well, with BNSGA-II performing better than all the other algorithms considered in this study. The IPL 2020 players’ data validated the applicability of the proposed model and algorithms. The trade-off squads contained players of each expertise in appropriate proportions. Further analysis of the trade-off squads demonstrated that many theoretically selected players performed well in IPL 2020 matches.