title: Convert dataframe column values into a list
body: <p>I have a dataframe named <code>matchdf</code>. It is a huge one so I'm showing the 1st 3 rows and columns of the dataframe:</p>
  
  <p><code>print(matchdf.iloc[:3,:3]</code></p>
  
  <pre><code>   Unnamed: 0                                   athletesInvolved awayScore
  0           0  [{'id': '39037', 'name': 'Azhar Ali', 'shortNa...         0
  1           1  [{'id': '568276', 'name': 'Imam-ul-Haq', 'shor...         0
  2           2  [{'id': '568276', 'name': 'Imam-ul-Haq', 'shor...         0
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I was working with <code>athletesInvolved</code> column and as you can see it contains a list which is of form:</p>
  
  <p><code>print(matchdf['athletesInvolved'][0])</code></p>
  
  <pre><code>[{'id': '39037', 'name': 'Azhar Ali', 'shortName': 'Azhar Ali', 'displayName': 'Azhar Ali'}, {'id': '17134', 'name': 'Tim Murtagh', 'shortName': 'Murtagh', 'displayName': 'Tim Murtagh'}]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However the datatype for this object is <code>str</code> as opposed to a <code>list</code>. How can we convert the above datatype to a list</p>