Expected Goals: The story of how data conquered football and changed the game forever

Exploratory, data-driven visualizations tend to be the province of data scientists and business intelligence analysts, although new tools have begun to engage general managers in visual exploration. It’s an exciting kind of visualization to try, because it often produces insights that can’t be gleaned any other way.

But then the counting started, and with it came an explosion of new information. The advent of modern sports analysis techniques means that now data is collected on every detail of every ball in every First Class or List A cricket match in the world. For many of those matches and for all internationals and major T20 leagues we also have Hawk-Eye (o