Graph Theory in Cricket?
One of the secretly fun parts of keeping a personal website is getting to look at its visitor statistics. Most of the hits I get are pretty predictable: Google searches for "Ross Churchley" or "monopolar graphs" end up here, and there's a steady trickle of people looking for Brian May's Erdős number or an "Edmonton Eulers" logo. But lately I've gotten a few hits from people looking for something I don't have on this site: "uses of graph theory in cricket."
So if you've arrived at this website hoping for applications of graph theory in the great sport of cricket: I hate to disappoint you, but I don't have much. I thought about it long and hard, but I couldn't come up with anything that directly applies a pure graph theoretic result. Certainly there's a great deal of statistics involved in cricket, most famously the method derived by Duckworth and Lewis to set a target after a rain delay. There's quite a bit of geometry (and possibly some stochastic programming) in setting a field. There's a ton of interesting mathematics from a bunch of different fields behind Hawk-Eye; maybe they use graph theoretic algorithms under the hood? Your club league might benefit from some of the work done on various scheduling problems, and the international travel schedules could use some combinatorial optimization. Data science can apparently help you bowl out Tendulkar and applied math can help you decide when to declare. Graph theory can be a helpful tool for solving a number of these problems, but as for a pure graph theoretic situation that crops up in cricket? Can't think of any. Sorry.
(If you can think of a practical application of graph theory to the great sport of cricket, let me know in the comments!)
University vs Colts
Although there was no rain in the forecast, dark and threatening clouds blocked the sun from shining on the Metchosin cricket ground. The University team was playing Colts CC, the youth team led by our own Ram Meyyappan. As they were shorthanded, we brought along a few extra players to lend them. With a chilly breeze setting in, we got started as soon as we could. University won the toss and elected to bat.
University vs Wicket Maidens
Our last game at UVic was against the Wicket Maidens. As the only all-women's team in the midweek league, the Wicket Maidens offer a unique challenge: each of their runs is matched with a penalty run, doubling their batting score. Playing in a fast artificial field, we had to make sure to set a high target. University won the toss and elected to bat.
University vs Metchosin
This match was the first of four scheduled at the artificial fields of UVic. I actually missed this one, being out of town visiting family, but I managed to reconstruct the match from our scorebook. UVic won the toss and elected to bowl first.
Beagle vs University
The opening match of the 2011 Midweek League season, between us and the Beagle Pub cricket club, turned out to be quite an exciting affair. Due to the weather and poor light — there was a strange mix of sunset and light showers — it was agreed to abbreviate both teams' innings to 14 overs. Beagle won the toss and elected to bat first.
