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Happy Sunday, everyone! As I write this, Australia have just claimed a much deserved Women's Cricket World Cup. Despite a valiant effort from England and a fantastic century from Nat Sciver, the 356 runs Australia piled on were too many to chase down. What I enjoyed most of all though, watching the game, was the spirit it was played in. Players were smiling throughout and genuinely looked like they were enjoying themselves. A refreshing change to how men's sport is often played.
With the World Cup draw being made on Friday, fans of the countries involved are excitedly planning their respective routes to glory. I am a naturally nervous England fan (who isn't?!) and will see potential pitfalls in any draw that's made (my mind goes back to Rob Green against the USA in South Africa 2010, our needing of a last minute winner against Wales in Euro 2016 and even more recently, a tepid performance against Scotland, at Wembley, in Euro 2020.
But I should be more positive, we've made it to the semi-final and final of the last two tournaments, we have a young squad that's had both top level international and champions league experience, we are playing in November when we'll be at our peak fitness wise and in air-conditioned stadiums. What could go wrong....
And football is where we are going to start this weeks round-up. First up, we have Vivek and he uses the #30DayChartChallenge to look at the previous World Cup winners using a tree map. The tree map makes it very easy to see the dominant forces in World Football and Vivek supplements this by adding the detail of the results of the finals below. Nice work, Vivek!
Sports Viz Sunday regular, Bo McCready celebrates the World Cup qualification of the USA with this viz documenting their road to Qatar journey. Bo's design really highlights just how much football is a squad game now, especially over a long period of time. No fewer than 38 players were used. it will be interesting to see which 'make the plane' over to Qatar. Thanks for sharing, Bo!
I did find it slightly amusing that the team unveiled a "we've qualified" banner after their penultimate match whilst still needing a result in their final match to ensure qualification! Congratulations though, I feel a global tournament is always a better spectacle when the US are involved.
The USA's neighbours, Canada were also successful in qualifying, ending a 36 year long hiatus from the tournament. Ray produces an info-packed viz documenting that journey for each of the years Canada tried and ultimately failed to qualify. It's great to see you back, Canada. I hope you have a successful tournament and well done, Ray. Great work.
Still on football but moving away from the World Cup. Also for the #30DayChartChallenge, Eliot delivers a piece of analysis that I've not seen before. He has compared which foot Premier Leagues pass with. Whilst the overall results aren't surprising, in that the majority of passes are right-footed, the proportions for each team are interesting. Ranging from over 75% of right-footed passes from Chelsea to only just over half from Arsenal. Very nice and is this a new chart type?! Do we have a name for it? Arcs, Crescents, Eclipses??
Turning our attention to Tennis now. Brett takes a look at average shot speeds in Women's grand slams. This sparked an interesting conversation on Twitter. Despite organisers slowing up the grass courts at Wimbledon, generally, grass is considered a 'quicker' surface and this is generally reflected here. What was more surprising is the disparity between the similar hard surfaces of the US and Australian Opens. My initial thought was the conditions and that different temperature, humidities might have an impact. If anyone has alternative theories, do let us know! Interesting stuff, Brett!
Mikeal analyses the performance of top woman's ice hockey player Marie-Philip Poulin. Indeed, if you check out the thread of this particular tweet you will find analysis across a whole host of players. Find your favourites and compare them. Great work, Mikeal!
I heard a lot about 'March Madness' when I was over in America last week (I had to mention it at least once, CJ!). I'll admit I had to do a bit of research to understand it related to the College Basketball championships. In this fantastic Viz, Kevin takes a look at the greatest games in NCAA tournament history including the biggest comeback, largest comeback, the greatest game and from his perspective, the worst game involving his beloved Kentucky Wildcats. There is also a bonus viz included and I won't spoil the surprise, check it out for yourselves!
Another #30DayChartChallenge, this time from Alejandro where he focuses on the part-to-whole aspect of the challenge to look at the proportion of gold medals by Men and Women. It's interesting to see the differences between the top 10 gold medal winning nations. Thanks, Alejandro.
I always love a self-quantified viz and this effort from Eleonora is on the slightly more unusual interest of climbing. It's great to see how you've progressed Eleonora in three short months to tackling what I assume to be more challenging climbs. Keep up the great work!
Another self-quantified is viz is next with this incredibly detailed dashboard from Yvan Fornes. Data from over 5 years has been collected and broken down in many different ways. Yvan has tracked walking, running, cycling and skiing in an incredible 1,185 individual sessions. Great viz, Yvan!
Our good friend Bo is back with the wonderfully interactive Major League Baseball dashboard. I really like the dynamic alert concept. It's a really great one to dive into if you are looking to add any final touches to your dashboard, whatever the subject.
Our round-up ends this week with Kimsong Ly re-sharing one of their old vizzes from a previous #sportsvizsunday challenge looking at NBA shots data. If you missed it the first time round then check it out.
That's it for this week. As always a pleasure to deep dive into this weeks content. Before I sign off a reminder for this months challenge where we take a look at the world of IndyCar. As a keen Formula One fan I'm definitely going to check this one out to learn a bit more about racing across the pond!
Have a great week everyone!
Simon and the Sports Viz Sunday team.
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