Home Sweet Home: The benefits of home advantage in cricket and football
Home advantage in cricket and football is much more than the phenomenon of the home teams winning more games than the visiting teams. It is the kilometre-long march of the home fans from the assembly point to the stadium, where the chanting does not stop for a single second. It is the roar of thunderous applause and cheer, followed by heckles, boos and jeer when the team buses enter the stadium. It is the comfort of playing on one’s home patch, surrounded by the familiar sights, sounds and smells of match-day at home. It includes the multiple traditions and rituals that cannot be missed, as silly as they seem. The aim is to boost your team’s morale by making them feel at home through raucous and synchronised showers of support and, at the same time, reducing the away fans’ chants to a mere whisper as the banter flows endlessly. It is not merely a home ground, but a fortress protected by the several thousand fans clad in the same hue bouncing in unison, singing the same tunes with hoarse voices and tirelessly waving banners and flags for hours on end to push their team over the line.
In this write-up, I will delve into the causes and psychology behind home advantage. I will then compare the different factors contributing to home advantage for cricket and football to prove that home advantage is different for different sports. At a time when almost every cricket and football tournament worldwide is being played behind closed doors with the absence of fans, research done by PLOS One and The Guardian found that fans are not necessary for a football team to perform well at home. I will be arguing against this, my focus being on elucidating the massive role fans play in contributing to home advantage in football. I want to bring to light the several factors which contribute in unison to create an advantageous situation for a cricket or football team playing at home. I will back these observations with relevant statistical research.
THE CAUSES OF HOME ADVANTAGE
A journal published by Colombia’s Pontifical Xavierian University identifies the four main causes of home advantage in competitive sports as the crowd, familiarity, travels and territoriality
· Crowd:- Multiple studies have indicated that a large crowd can influence referees to favour the home team. The size of the crowd, proximity to the field of play and the intensity of support are factors that influence the mood states or the levels of attention of athletes, coaches and referees, impacting performance.
· Familiarity with the playing facilities and the local climatic conditions and altitude are few contributing causes to home advantage.
· Travels:- The away team’s travelling may contribute to home advantage due to the fatigue athletes suffer while travelling long distances. Long trips disrupt routines, leading to away teams being disorientated and lacking match sharpness.
· Territoriality:- Historical, ethnic and religious conflicts are responsible for an increased sense of territoriality. You always want to get one over your nearest rivals. Players and coaches will be more pumped up for these occasions. Traditional derbies and high-octane tussles see a greater number of home fans thronging to stadiums. The away teams can feel intimidated by the hostile atmosphere, resulting in an advantage for the home team.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ADVANTAGES OF PLAYING AT HOME
Players and coaches have greater confidence in their and the team’s abilities prior to home games. The emotions and mood states of players are superior at home. Cognitive and somatic anxiety, depression, tension, anger, and confusion are lower during a home game. Players have higher levels of testosterone before home games. They compete more aggressively, expend more effort, and persist longer.
A study carried out by Paul W. Dennis and Albert V. Carron found out that coaches tend to adopt more offensive strategies at home than away. This puts the away team on the back-foot from the start, handing the home team the initiative to seize control.
HOME ADVANTAGE IN CRICKET VS FOOTBALL
Celebrated columnist Santosh Desai writes, “Cricket is not a sport in the classical sense, it is a rumination on life. It draws meaning from the earth, the elements, time and human strengths and inadequacies.” Home teams tailor the pitches to their advantage. Cricket thrives on complexity and difference, not standardisation and uniformity.
Cricket sees the most remarkable difference between home and away performances. In the last ten years, the home teams have won just under twice as many Tests as they have lost (212 wins and 111 losses out of 399 matches), meaning that home-ground advantage is massive in cricket (Wagner).
The main reason for this is the different conditions found in different cricketing nations, which allow pitch curators to prepare the pitches to the home team’s strengths. The nature of the pitch depends on the type of soil and the climate of the area.
Cricket is more reliant on the local conditions than any other team sport. Because the ball is bowled into the pitch, the soil and grass both have an impact on how the ball reacts after hitting the surface. Atmospheric conditions such as heat, humidity, UV radiation, cloud cover, wind speed, direction and consistency all impact the way the ball behaves. The pace and smoothness of the outfield is also a factor. Cricket grounds need not have the same dimensions. They come in all sizes and shapes, and the different levels of light available in various places can make a difference (Wagner).
Players are incredibly familiar with how pitches behave at home as they grow up playing on similar tracks. Pitches in England and New Zealand are usually covered with a thick coating of grass, helping the ball to swing both ways with the help of the wind. Pitches in Australia have more clay in them, making the tracks skiddy and bouncy. South African pitches offer a mixture of swing and bounce, but the surface wears away quickly. Pitches in the Indian sub-continent are spin-friendly as they are dry and dusty, which aids the ball to grip and turn.
On the other hand, home advantage in football does not rely on the playing surface and conditions. I believe that in football, the fans play a significant role in creating a home advantage. Football has a symbiotic relationship with its fans. Stadiums are typically packed with supporters chanting passionately, creating electrifying atmospheres worldwide. After a long hiatus due to the coronavirus outbreak, the beautiful game returned, but it was not the same as before. Ghastly sights of empty stands filled our television screens as public safety and health became the top priority. Fans were replaced by cardboard cut-outs and fake crowd noises, both unworthy alternatives.
Since the restart of the English Premier League, a banner has been hanging over Old Trafford’s Stretford End, which reads, “Football is nothing without fans.” The origin of that quote is debated. Some people attribute it to the late Celtic manager Jock Stein while others accredit it to Sir Matt Busby, a close confidant of Stein. The true essence of this quote is being questioned now, as spectator-less games have become the norm. With a database of home games played without spectators, studies have been conducted to answer precisely how much fans contribute to home advantage.
A study conducted by PLOS found clear evidence that referee biases disappear or are even reversed in the absence of spectators. The match dominance of home teams (measured as differences in shots and shots on target) is reduced by half in the absence of spectators. Home advantage fell by about a third, but the study found that this drop was not statistically significant. Despite these findings, home teams retained an edge over the visitors in terms of a better win-loss ratio at home when compared to away. Even if the absence of spectators reduces the home advantage, the data found evidence that the home advantage does not entirely disappear and thus, is not wholly attributable to direct crowd support or spectator-induced referee bias. The research did conclude that spectator presence was likely to be the only or principal reason for biased referee behaviour.
I feel that there are some loopholes to these findings, as the spectator-less 2019–20 games used in the research were conducted towards the end of the season, a period usually seen as a make-or-break time for teams hoping to finish the season strongly and qualify for European football. We need to collate data from an entire season of spectator-less matches to draw explicit parallels. Findings after the end of the current footballing season (2020–21) will paint an accurate picture of how crucial spectators are to home matches.
I will look no further than statistics from two football teams I support: Manchester United and Bengaluru Football Club. Manchester United finished the 2020/21 Premier League season in second place. They amassed 74 points so far this season. 44 out of those 74 points have been secured in away games, which means a paltry 30 points were won at home. United thrives on its home support, which has pushed the team to new levels multiple times in the past. All six losses this season have been at home, and this is a club that has gone three full seasons (1995/96, 1999/00 and 2010/11) without a single home defeat. Manchester United equalled the 27-game unbeaten record on their travels, set by Arsenal’s invincibles back in 2004. Only 2 other teams have gone an entire season unbeaten away from home, Preston North End in 1888/89 and Arsenal (twice) in 2001/02 and 2003/04.
Much closer to home, Bengaluru FC slumped to their worst finish in the club’s 8-year history. Since joining the Indian Super League (ISL) in 2017, the 2020/21 season was the first time BFC finished outside the top-3. The entirety of the 2020/21 season was played in Goa, a neutral venue for the ten teams barring FC Goa. BFC sorely missed playing at home, with the Sree Kanteerava Stadium proving impossible to breach for away teams across Asia. From 2017 to early 2020, Bengaluru FC played 30 ISL games at home, including 3 semi-final home legs and 1 final. They won 20, drew 6 and lost only 4 home matches (including the 2017–18 final). Between 2017 and 2019, Bengaluru FC were unbeaten for 724 days in the league (Not counting the 2018 finals loss as it is not a league game), a truly outstanding record. A massive factor for this level of domination at home is Bengaluru FC’s fan base, the West Block Blues. Widely acknowledged by the players as the deciding factor for being relentless at home, I have seen and been a part of the substantial impact fans have on how a football team plays. With referees perennially against BFC (as seen especially through the shocking decisions taken in the 2018 ISL finals and the 2015 I-league title decider against Mohun Bagan, both home games) and Bengaluru’s pleasant and welcoming climate, the only factor I see responsible for this domination are the vocal West Block Blues, further emboldening my argument about the impact of fans in providing a home advantage for a football team. While my several experiences to verify the same are one thing, the numbers speak for themselves.
WORKS CITED
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Desai, Santosh. “The Home Pitch Advantage & Other Vagaries Of Test Cricket.” Times Of India Blog. 21 Feb. 2021. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/Citycitybangbang/the-home-pitch-advantage-other-vagaries-of-test-cricket/. Accessed 10 May 2021.
Grover, Natalie. “Football Teams Retain Home Advantage With No Crowd, Study Finds”. The Guardian. 31 Mar. 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/31/football-teams-retain-home-advantage-no-crowd-study. Accessed 10 May 2021.
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Wagner, Michael. “How And Why Touring Sides Find It Almost Impossible To Overcome Home Advantage In Test Cricket.” Firstpost. 3 March 2020. https://www.firstpost.com/firstcricket/sports-news/how-and-why-touring-sides-find-it-almost-impossible-to-overcome-home-advantage-in-test-cricket-8111161.html. Accessed 10 May 2021.
Wunderlich, Fabian. Matthias Weigelt, Robert Rein, Daniel Memmert. “How Does Spectator Presence Affect Football? Home Advantage Remains In European Top-Class Football Matches Played Without Spectators During The COVID-19 Pandemic”. PLOS ONE, vol 16, no. 3, 2021, pp. 1–4. Public Library Of Science (Plos). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0248590. Accessed 10 May 2021.