Towards Commentary-Driven Soccer Player Analytics

Open information extraction (open IE) has been shown to be useful in a number of NLP Tasks, such as question answering, relation extraction, and information retrieval. Soccer is the most watched sport in the world. The dynamic nature of the game corresponds to the team strategy and individual contribution, which are the deciding factors for a team’s success. Generally, companies collect sports event data manually and very rarely they allow free-access to these data by third parties. However, a large amount of data is available freely on various social media platforms where different types of users discuss these very events. To rely on expert data, we are currently using the live-match commentary as our rich and unexplored data-source. Our aim out of this commentary analysis is to initially extract key events from each game and eventually key entities like players involved, player action and other player related attributes from these key events. We propose an end-to-end application to extract commentaries and extract player attributes from it. The study will primarily depend on an extensive crowd labelling of data involving precautionary periodical checks to prevent incorrectly tagged data. This research will contribute significantly towards analysis of commentary and acts as a cheap tool providing player performance analysis for smaller to intermediate budget soccer club

Towards Commentary-Driven Soccer Player Analytics

Open information extraction (open IE) has been shown to be useful in a number of NLP Tasks, such as question answering, relation extraction, and information retrieval. Soccer is the most watched sport in the world. The dynamic nature of the game corresponds to the team strategy and individual contribution, which are the deciding factors for a team’s success. Generally, companies collect sports event data manually and very rarely they allow free-access to these data by third parties. However, a large amount of data is available freely on various social media platforms where different types of users discuss these very events. To rely on expert data, we are currently using the live-match commentary as our rich and unexplored data-source. Our aim out of this commentary analysis is to initially extract key events from each game and eventually key entities like players involved, player action and other player related attributes from these key events. We propose an end-to-end application to extract commentaries and extract player attributes from it. The study will primarily depend on an extensive crowd labelling of data involving precautionary periodical checks to prevent incorrectly tagged data. This research will contribute significantly towards analysis of commentary and acts as a cheap tool providing player performance analysis for smaller to intermediate budget soccer club

Women, cricket and gender relations: A sociological analysis of the experiences of female cricketers

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The sociological study of women and sport, thus far, has focused primarily on females' involvement in football. This can be seen in a variety of sociological studies that have emphasised the persistence of unequal gender relations in the context of football. The purpose of this thesis aims to make a contribution to the literature by providing the first sociological analysis of females' involvement in cricket through a case study involving females' cricketers in a UK county. A figurational framework is adopted throughout the thesis to explore female cricketers' position as outsiders within the context of cricket, which has been predominantly a male preserve. It is suggested within the thesis that female cricketers are a heterogeneous outsider group with internal power relations that affect their outsiders' status. Gender relations as a type of unequal power relation are an integral, enduring part of female cricketers' experiences of the cricket figuration. Furthermore, the testimonies of contemporary female cricketers demonstrate that they remain 'outsiders' in the cricket figuration. That is to say, through a variety of processes, they remain on the margins of male cricket

Primers, Commentaries, and Kanbun Literacy in Japanese Literary Culture, 950-1250CE

This project seeks a new perspective on issues of literacy, literary language, and cultural contact in the literature of premodern Japan by examining the primers used to study Chinese-style literature in the Heian and early medieval periods (c. 900-1250CE). Much of Heian literary production was centered on kanbun: "Chinese-style" writing that resembled classical Chinese and mobilized allusive connections to classical Chinese texts, but was usually read based on classical Japanese vocabulary and syntax. The knowledge gleaned from introductory kanbun education forms an important and little-researched common thread linking readers and writers from a wide range of backgrounds - from male and female courtiers to specialized university scholars to medieval monks and warriors eager to appropriate court culture. While tracing the roles of commonly-studied kanbun primers and commentaries in shaping Heian literary culture and its medieval reception, I consider key aspects of premodern Japan literacy - from the art of kundoku ("gloss-reading") to the systems of knowledge involved in textual commentary and the adaptation of kanbun material. Examining the educational foundations of premodern Japanese literary culture demonstrates that kanbun and other literary styles functioned as closely entangled modes of literacy rather than as native and foreign languages, and that certain elements of classical Chinese knowledge formed a valued set of raw material for literary creativity. Chapter 1 outlines the diversity of premodern Japanese literacy and the key primers and encyclopedic reference works involved in kanbun education. Chapter 2 focuses on a primer for learning written characters, the Thousand Character Classic (Qian zi wen), discussing its varied reception in the contexts of calligraphy practice, oral recitation, and commentarial authority and offering translations from the tongue-in-cheek literary showpiece Thousand Character Classic Continued (Zoku Senjimon, 1132). In Chapter 3, I examine the role of kanbun knowledge in Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book (Makura no soshi, early 11th century), which foregrounds the social and creative roles of introductory kanbun material as a vocabulary of conversational quotation among both men and women. Chapter 4 turns to Condensed Meaning of the New Ballads (Shin gafu ryakui, 1172), a ground-breaking anecdotal commentary on Bai Juyi's poetry, to discuss the way that kanbun texts were interpreted and reinvented through commentary. Chapter 5 discusses an innovative poetic adaptation of a kanbun primer, Waka Poems on the Child's Treasury (Mogyu waka, 1204), which makes use of poetic topics and historical anecdotes as effective ways of organizing kanbun knowledge and also suggest the potential for introductory education to spark literary creativity across genre boundaries. I conclude with a brief look at the relevance of premodern Japanese kanbun education for broader questions about literary language and for comparisons involving other transregional classical languages like Latin. By illustrating the processes by which elements of Chinese literary culture were adopted and adapted throughout East Asia, this project provides fertile ground for exploring issues of literacy and cultural interaction that underlie all forms of literature

A History of English Women’s Cricket, 1880-1939

This thesis is a study of the history of women’s cricket from the 1880s until 1939. Although the primary focus of this thesis is the interwar years, it explores the earliest forms of women’s cricket to provide context for the motivation of individuals to promote the game as acceptable for women, and of those who denounced its suitability. By exploring societal concerns over correct masculine and feminine behaviour and ideals, this thesis provides insight into the methods that contemporaries adopted to contrast these restrictions. Through a detailed examination of local newspapers and archival sources, this thesis investigates the reactions by society to the concept of women playing what was hitherto seen as a masculine sport. In particular it examines the relationship not only between the women and men who organised cricket on a national scale, but between middle- and working- class women and how class played an equally important role as gender as a restricting influence on opportunities for working-class women to participate in leisure. As a consequence, this thesis will demonstrate the willingness of working-class women to participate in physical activities when given the opportunity, either through their male counterparts, or the workplace. Although academic work on the history of women’s sport is an expanding field, little attention has been paid to specific team games, with the exception of football. Similarly, research on women’s sport has primarily focused on women of the upper- and middle-classes, with the activities of working-class women being largely overlooked. This thesis aims to expand our knowledge of women’s cricket by not only providing a detailed examination of the national sporting organisations, but also to redress the knowledge gaps surrounding the participation in sport by working-class women

The leisure activities of the rural working classes with special reference to Norfolk 1840-1940

This thesis seeks to address an acknowledged gap in the historiography of leisure – that of rural working class leisure activities. The first objective of this thesis is therefore to investigate different types of rural leisure, including ‘rational recreation’, traditional and innovative, and gender-specific pastimes. Using Norfolk as a case study, I examined a range of different leisure opportunities. The second objective is to question the changing nature of leisure provision and the impact that this had on rural lives, and it was found that opportunities for leisure increased considerably throughout the period 1840-1940. This was brought about by better working conditions, including fewer working hours and higher wages. Technology also played a key role, providing increased availability of transport, both public and personal, and this allowed access to urban recreations, unavailable in the countryside. Some traditional pastimes endured, while others were replaced by new forms of entertainment, such as the cinema and modernised fairground attractions. Other innovations included the rise of local sports, for instance cricket and football, and alternatives to the public house – reading rooms and village halls, the latter being open to all sections of society and not solely men. Arguably, rural women benefited most from these remarkable transformations. The introduction of new societies, such as the Mothers’ Union and the Women’s Institute led to considerably enhanced lives for their members. There is clear evidence of the gradual adjustment from widespread philanthropy to self-determination among working people, and together with the remarkable alteration in outlook produced by the First World War, this increasingly caused local communities to take control of their own leisure provision. This is consistent with the social changes occurring in all spheres of rural life