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An interesting topic of conversation emerged this week among the Sports Viz Sunday team initiated by the comment on this BBC article referring to a match in the current Dart World Championship in which player Christian Kist threw a "9-nice darter"–the least amount of darts to check out a score of 501.
"Darts is one of the few sports that can measure perfection; snooker has the 147 maximum break, golf has the hole-in-one, darts has the nine-dart finish"
This got us thinking, which other sports is it possible to achieve perfection? We quickly discounted anything that was time-related––there's always a faster time out there. What about tennis, the perfect match, 6-0, 6-0? Well, even that isn't perfect as lost points would inevitably have occurred along the way. How about the perfect game, four consecutive aces? That might work. In football, the perfect hat trick (header, left foot and right foot)?
Are there others? Let us know your thoughts! It certainly is a great time of year to be having these debates with hopefully plenty of time spent relaxing with friends and family. Even better, sport certainly isn't relaxing with some top quality entertainment to be had if afore-mentioned friends and families turn into unwanted annoyances.
Onto the round-up and we start with a bang and our good friend, Rob Taylor. Rarely has a team dominated a sport to such an extent as the New Zealand Rugby Union team. Rob beautifully demonstrates this with a small panel design highlighting each of the 'All Blacks' opponents with the distinctive fern emblem and colouring in a proportion of the fern relative to the number of wins New Zealand has. It's incredibly eye-catching how much of this viz remains 'black' with tiny tips of white (where the opponents have won) coming through. That's a great way to end the year, Rob. Well done!
Next up we have a clean and crisp Cricket batting partnership view from Yash Sakhuja. I just love the overall design of this. Everything is well laid out, there's nothing that shouldn't be there and the information is easy to find and process. When it can be tempting to continue to add more and more to a design seeing one that only includes the critical information is refreshing. I could also imagine this working for the F1 driver pairing to see which driver has made the more telling contributions over the year.
For those of us who are F1 fans, when a crash occurs naturally thoughts turn to the safety of the driver followed by the exciting spectacle the incident has delivered. Less often perhaps is a financial impact considered. In this view, Frederic Fery shares the costs incurred for each driver over the course of the 2024 World Championship. Looking at this, it's certainly no surprise to see Sergio Perez parting ways with Red Bull with "Checco" being the costliest driver, as well as arguably the most underachieving, on the grid. Well done, Pierre Gasley, not so much as a chipped wing mirror went against his name. A first by all accounts. Nice job, Frederic.
Turning to Rugby League and Lorna Brown takes a look at the consistency of team selection and asks the question "Does consistency lead to greater success". There are a couple of engaging views to help answer this question starting with a scatter plot looking at the relationship between points and selection. It feels as though there might be a trend there. For those looking for more detail, the team-specific matrices below offer the full details on the number of players used and the lineups for each match. Much to delve into from Lorna, here.
In closing let me take this opportunity to wish you all a fantastic festive season however you choose to celebrate it, and thank you for your support and amazing contributions throughout the year. It goes without saying that #sportsvizsunday wouldn't exist without your vizzing efforts. I'd also like to extend season greetings and thanks to the rest of the team here. It's a pleasure to collaborate with each of you and spend time talking vizzes, sport and occasionally a combination of the two.
Finally, watch this space, sort of, in January for a special 2024 Sports Viz Sunday video review where we'll be taking a look at our favourites from the past twelve months.
That's it for 2024. All the best and see you in 2025.
Simon & the #SportsVizSunday team
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