The England women’s team is using AI to pick their starting XI, says coach Jon Lewis

On May 4, 2024By Vaseline

England are using artificial intelligence (AI) to pick their playing squad, women’s head coach Jon Lewis has revealed. He said the technology provided crucial feedback in terms of matches and also helped them win the T20 series against Australia.

Lewis said he was introduced to the technology, powered by a London-based company PSi, while coaching the UP Warriorz during the inaugural edition of the Women’s Premier League (WPL) in India in March 2023.

Interestingly, Steve Borthwick, the England Rugby Union coach who also manages rugby league team Wigan Warriors and English Football League One side Wigan Athletic, has used the same system, ESPNCricinfo reported.

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The England head coach said the AI system successfully helped them make the final decision to select one player when two in-form players with almost similar skills had to be selected in a match against Australia during the Women’s Ashes last year.

“We are able to run simulated teams against the simulated opposition to give us an idea of how these teams might stack up against each other,” Lewis told ESPNCricinfo.

“I can send multiple different setups to the company and run them. I think it’s about 250,000 simulations per team that I send with all the different permutations that can happen during the game.”

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“What I would say is that it is not about the way we select the side, but it is an element of the selection that we use to help understand what could happen in the future. We used it to great effect in the Ashes last summer, playing against the Australian side,” Lewis added.

Providing further insight into how the system has helped the England women’s team, Lewis said: “Last year there was mainly one selection. We saw a real strength in Australia and we combined our strength, our best bowlers, with that part of the game against Australia last year.

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“That worked very, very well for us. That especially helped us win the T20 series and that got us back into the Ashes,” Lewis said, referring to England’s 2-1 win over Australia.

“The players were both players I wanted to pick. So it did help me with those selections and it turned out that it worked very well,” he said.

However, Lewis admitted that traditional ways of selecting teams after monitoring players during their preparations could not be replaced, but that AI can only help make better decisions.

“Obviously we’re on the ground with the people and that’s probably the first thing we look at in terms of selection, which people are playing well, we use our cricketing eye,” Lewis said.

“But it’s just a small part of what we do and it’s very interesting. Last summer it played very well against Australia.”

“I think it will help with boundary decisions in terms of selections and match-ups. Will it ever be at the front, the thing that selects the team? In my opinion I would say no. Other coaches may feel very differently about it, but it’s really interesting,” he said.