Having the right squad at their disposal is one thing; being able to execute their plans is something different. Woodhill’s penchant for data plays an integral part of game management.

Woodhill is a lover of American sports and uses models from the US to inform his preparations of teams. However, Woodhill is aware of the journey that teams such as the Melbourne Stars need to go on to utilise data available to teams.

“It’s definitely an education process. You could have the best data in the world. If you don’t deliver the right message around it, it’s useless,” Woodhill said.

That education process permeates through the organisation. How each player uses or doesn’t use, data is personal. The Stars are on the journey and the captain, Glenn Maxwell, is using data analytics to his advantage.

“I don’t think it’s something that you just introduce and expect success," admits Woodhill. "Then, someone like Maxie [Glenn Maxwell] is very instinctive as a captain. He wants to be able to have a choice between decisions based on information, rather than potluck.

“I don’t think Maxie’s a gambling captain. I think he’s more so around making decisions or multiple decisions around having access to all the information he can.”

Woodhill and his team are not just giving the Stars data. They are trying to build programmes to leverage the data. Woodhill compared data utilisation to technique – it is how you use it under pressure, in match conditions, that counts.

Bringing clarity to match situations is, according to Woodhill, the raison d'être of data analytics.

“Sometimes, players and coaches get simple decisions wrong, and they don’t choose the simple decisions," he says.

"Hopefully, data is not only providing you with a detailed source of knowledge, but it’s also reverting you to what you’re good at and, sometimes, players need to see that.

"They need to see that you were at your best when you bowl wide yorkers, rather than try and bowl bouncers.”

“The ability to execute might be that you haven’t got the ability to bowl 145km/h. So, if you haven’t, is your 125km/h bouncer going to do the damage to someone who players short-pitch bowling well at that speed?

"And, that’s where American sports are. They know what sort of pitch to make based on their skill set, rather than the overall data. That’s the next phase for cricket and I think cricketers are on that right path.”

The evolution of data analytics is ever-evolving, and Trent Woodhill is one of the pioneers.

Not willing to make do with the traditional methods of match preparation, Woodhill is ready to find tools from other sports and model them in cricket.

His desire for the progress of cricket as a sport, not just for the teams he is working with, is infectious.

Whether he is right or wrong about The Hundred will be seen but it won’t be for want of trying.

Keep an eye on the Melbourne Stars; they have plans for BBL09 and the data to back them up. Just ask Trent Woodhill.