CricketStudioOKF
SpecificationMethodologyVerified 2026-06-22

Cricket OKF Entity Identity Rules

How to uniquely and stably identify cricket entities in an OKF bundle. Defines slug conventions, alias handling, same-name player disambiguation, external ID fields, team name scoping, and venue disambiguation. Warns AI agents not to infer identity from name alone.

Why Identity Matters

Cricket has a name collision problem. There are multiple players named "Mohammad Amir." "Deccan Chargers" became "Sunrisers Hyderabad." "Brabourne Stadium" is in Mumbai and is different from "Wankhede Stadium" — also in Mumbai. "Rajasthan Royals" was suspended for two seasons and reinstated.

A cricket data system that relies on display names for identity will collide, merge, and confuse. Every entity in an OKF bundle must have a stable, unique, machine-resolvable identifier that is decoupled from its display name.

Entity ID Convention

Format

cricketstudio:<type>:<slug>

Examples:

cricketstudio:player:virat-kohli
cricketstudio:team:mi-new-york
cricketstudio:venue:wankhede-stadium
cricketstudio:league:ipl
cricketstudio:metric:batting-strike-rate
cricketstudio:dossier:mlc-ta-boult-all-time

Rules

  1. type matches the file's frontmatter type field.
  2. slug is kebab-case, lowercase, ASCII only.
  3. entity_id is immutable once published. Do not rename slugs after a file is live.
  4. entity_id must be globally unique within the bundle. The validator fails on duplicates.
  5. Index files (index.md) do not require entity_id.

Slug Conventions

Slugs are derived from the Cricsheet or ESPNcricinfo player identifier where one exists — this gives a stable external anchor.

ta-boult          →  TA Boult
sn-netravalkar    →  SN Netravalkar
fh-allen          →  FH Allen

For entities without a Cricsheet/ESPNcricinfo anchor (venues, league-level entities):

grand-prairie-stadium          →  Grand Prairie Stadium
wankhede-stadium               →  Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai
church-street-park-morrisville →  Church Street Park, Morrisville, NC

For teams: use the current official franchise name slug:

mi-new-york         →  MI New York
texas-super-kings   →  Texas Super Kings
washington-freedom  →  Washington Freedom

Aliases

Use the aliases field to list all name variants that should resolve to this entity:

aliases:
  - Trent Boult
  - T Boult
  - T.A. Boult
  - Boult

Aliases are for lookup and disambiguation — they do not affect the slug or entity_id. An alias must not create a false merge between two different players who share a common short name.

Same-Name Player Rule

If two different players share a name (or common alias), they must not be merged. Each gets a unique slug that includes a differentiating element:

mohammad-amir-pak   →  Mohammad Amir (Pakistan)
mohammad-amir-bd    →  Mohammad Amir (Bangladesh)

Merge only when canonical external IDs (Cricsheet, ESPNcricinfo, Wikidata) confirm the same person.

External IDs (same_as)

Use same_as to link to external identity systems:

same_as:
  cricsheet: ta_boult
  espncricinfo: "374226"
  wikidata: Q7688649
  wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trent_Boult

External IDs are the authoritative source for resolving ambiguity. If two player files have the same same_as.cricsheet ID, they are the same person — resolve the merge.

Team Name Scoping

Teams rename, rebrand, relocate, and merge. OKF team files should scope the title to the current name and use aliases for historical names:

title: Sunrisers Hyderabad
aliases:
  - SRH
  - Deccan Chargers    # historical name, same franchise

Do not create a separate file for "Deccan Chargers" — use aliases. Do create a separate file when a franchise is dissolved and a genuinely new franchise takes its slot.

Season-specific records belong in season files scoped to that year, not in the team file.

Venue Disambiguation

Venue names are ambiguous — the same city has multiple grounds, and the same ground has had multiple names. Always include the city and, for similarly named grounds, a differentiating geographic qualifier in the slug:

wankhede-stadium          →  Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai
brabourne-stadium         →  Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai
eden-gardens              →  Eden Gardens, Kolkata
grand-prairie-stadium     →  Grand Prairie Stadium, Grand Prairie, TX
church-street-park-morrisville →  Church Street Park, Morrisville, NC

For multi-ground cities in MLC (Dallas, New York, etc.), always append the city:

title: Grand Prairie Stadium
description: MLC home venue in Grand Prairie, TX (Dallas metro area).
aliases:
  - Grand Prairie Stadium, Dallas
  - Grand Prairie, TX

Match Identity

Match files must include at minimum:

entity_id: cricketstudio:match:<slug>   # e.g. ipl-2026-final
title: <Team A> vs <Team B>, <Competition> <Season>
# plus in frontmatter or body:
# teams, date (ISO 8601), venue, result, season

Do not publish a match file without the date and teams — they are the minimum disambiguation fields.

Agent Guidance

Do not infer identity from display names alone.

  • "Kohli" could be Virat Kohli, Anuj Rawat (nicknamed Kohli by commentators), or a stadium named in his honour.
  • "Pollard" could be Kieron Pollard or Keemo Paul (who sometimes appears in the same dataset).
  • "Mumbai Indians" could refer to the IPL franchise or the Rangpur Riders (which Pollard has captained as a "Mumbai Indians" ambassador).

Always resolve to a canonical entity_id or same_as.cricsheet ID before making a claim about a player. If the entity cannot be resolved, state "entity not confirmed" rather than guessing.

Related

cricketokfspecificationidentityentities