The assessment of batsmen in cricket is largely based upon their average score: a Test average of 50 or over provides a rule-of-thumb for distinguishing great players from the merely good; Donald Bradman, with the highest Test average ever achieved (99.94), is generally regarded as the greatest...

The twin issues of what makes people “happy,” and the relative strength of these happiness affecting factors, have in the recent past become a staple of economic analysis and goes under the rubric of “happiness research”. The aim of such research is to understand what the determinants of...

This chapter provides an overview of the main themes presented in this book. Most books on happiness are concerned with answering, in their diverse ways, a basic question: how should I live? Such books assume, however, that the path to happiness lies entirely within one’s control. Happiness is...

Happiness is usually measured by simply asking people about how happy they are (or, have been in the recent past). The most usual way of doing so is to ask a “happiness question”: ‘Taking all things together, would you say that you are (i) very happy; (ii) quite happy; (iii) not very...

Notwithstanding the fact that the world’s major religions espouse the principle of inter-religion tolerance, religion has, arguably, replaced ideology in the 21st century as the main destructive force in human affairs. This is because religion, more than a set of theological beliefs, is an...

The link between income and happiness is often explained by the Easterlin paradox: income and happiness in a country are positively related at a point in time but unrelated, over time. So, at any point in time, money did buy happiness but, over time, the level of happiness in a country did not...

This chapter discusses in some detail the element of luck as it pertains to team performance, focusing first on the importance of the toss and then the extent to which match results are due to ability and/or to luck. The importance of the toss is analysed employing Bayes’ Theorem which draws a...

The narrative of this chapter is one of opportunities in cricket — offered and denied. In particular, it discusses opportunities offered systemically to members of certain groups and denied to those who belong to other groups. In India, this takes the form of the caste to which a person is...

This chapter argues that an important reason for following sport is to participate in the uncertainty of a close contest. This is particularly important for league sports in which the long-term sustainability of leagues depends upon the degree of their competitive balance. This chapter examines...

This chapter examines gender inequality in the quality of adjudication in cricket matches. First, all the benefits of neutral umpires in Test Matches are exclusive to men’s Test Matches and have bypassed the women’s game entirely. Second, most of the benefits of the Decision Review System...