New Zealand robot Ikram predicts Afghanistan to win World Cup

Eduardo Sandoval with some of Canterbury’s research robots (Photo credits: radionz.co.nz)

Canterbury (New Zealand), Feb 10 (IANS) A robot here has predicted that Afghanistan will win the cricket World Cup 2015.

Afghanistan are 1000-1 in betting odds to win the tournament and are very much the minnows among the cricketing nations. They are clubbed with Australia, Bangladesh, England, New Zealand, Scotland and Sri Lanka in Pool A.

The prediction was made by University of Canterbury's robot, named Ikram, after viewing the 14 competing countries' flags.

After narrowing the field down to India, the West Indies, Scotland, New Zealand and Afghanistan, the robot decided that Afghanistan would be champions. Eduardo Sandoval, a University of Canterbury HITLab PhD student, has developed the robot's prediction software.

"Of course, this is very unlikely, but with cricket the outcome can always be unexpected," Sandoval was quoted as saying by nzherald.co.nz on Tuesday.

The robot was named after the Mexican-Syrian philosopher Ikram Antaki. Sandoval said that inspired by Paul the Octopus who made predictions for the 2010 football World Cup, he decided to test Ikram's powers of prediction.

New Zealand is co-hosting the quadrennial tournament with Australia. The tournament opens with the first match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka at Christchurch's Hagley Oval on Saturday.