International Journal of Advancements in Research & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 9, September-2014 1 ISSN 2278-7763 Copyright © 2014 SciResPub. IJOART APPLICATION OF ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS FOR FINDING THE BEST TEST BATSMAN Mayuresh K Vaidya, Aditya Balande Mayuresh K Vaidya, Bharat Forge Ltd., Pune, India; Aditya Balande, Student at College of Engineering, Pune, India. E-mail: mayuresh.k.vaidya@gmail.com Guide: M.P.Khond M.P.Khond, Professor at College of Engineering, Pune, India. ABSTRACT Since last few years, the answer to the question ‘Who is the best test batsman?’ has always been a highly debatable issue. Each individual has a different opinion for the same. Moreover, the answer has always been influenced by the experts belonging to that particular era. Most of the answers given by the experts are based on the individual records of the player or the overall span of the player’s career, but there are certainly some other parameters which should be looked into. Every expert has their own judgement and hence their own criteria which may somewhat always favour the player they want to be the best. Hence, there is a need for an approach which takes into account all of the statistics related to the player and analyses them on a common scale. A unique approach is needed to obtain the results. The model of ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS can be applied for this purpose. AHP has given solutions in many applications such as selection of facility location for spinning industry, performance evaluation of team work, selecting the optimum replacement policy etc. This paper aims at finding the best test batsman by successfully implementing this technique for the first time in the field of sports. The batsmen averaging more than 50 and having scored more than 10000 runs in their test career are considered here. Keywords: AHP, Best Test Batsman. ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS The model used for determining the best test batsman is ‘Analytical Hierarchy Process’. AHP handles qualitative as well as quantitative data together.[2][4] It enables the decision makers to represent the interaction of multiple factors in a complex situation. The process requires decision makers to develop a hierarchical structure for the factors which are explicit in the given problem and to provide judgement about relative importance of each of these factors ,specify a preference for each decision alternative with respect to each other factor. It provides a prioritized ranking order indicating the overall preference for each of the decision alternative. The most important advantage of AHP is that it is designed to incorporate tangible as well as non- tangible factors especially where the subjective judgements of different individuals constitute an important part of the decision process. The steps involved are as follows( same as per [4] ): 1) Determine the objective and the evaluation factors 2) Construct a pair wise comparison matrix using a scale of relative importance. Assuming N factor( i.e. criteria) the pair wise comparison of factor I with factor J yield a square matrix A1 NXN where α ij =1 and when i=j and α ij = 1/α ji 3) Find the relative normalized weight (W i ) of each factor by (a) Calculating the geometric mean of I th row and (b)normalizing means of row in the comparison matrix W=GM/∑GM IJOART