Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of the Operational Research Society on 9/1/18, available online: https://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2017.1415642
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Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Scheduling an amateur cricket league over a 9-year period
AU - Wright, Michael Bruce
N1 - This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of the Operational Research Society on 9/1/18, available online: https://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2017.1415642
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - This paper describes a scheduling exercise carried out for the Minor Counties’ Cricket Association (MCCA), which runs an amateur league based across England. The MCCA League consists of two divisions of ten teams each, with each team playing three home matches and three away matches each year, with opponents rotating between years; effectively this was scheduled as a double round robin over a three-year period. Originally the schedules had been repeated on a three-year cycle. However, problems of fairness and balance between years arose, and the MCCA therefore decided they needed to commission the creation of a nine-year schedule – a sextuple round-robin – which would address these equity issues and others. These issues were formulated as soft constraints, some of which related to a nine-year period, and a schedule was successfully produced using a form of Simulated Annealing, operating over a variety of neighbourhoods. The new nine-year schedule is currently in operation.
AB - This paper describes a scheduling exercise carried out for the Minor Counties’ Cricket Association (MCCA), which runs an amateur league based across England. The MCCA League consists of two divisions of ten teams each, with each team playing three home matches and three away matches each year, with opponents rotating between years; effectively this was scheduled as a double round robin over a three-year period. Originally the schedules had been repeated on a three-year cycle. However, problems of fairness and balance between years arose, and the MCCA therefore decided they needed to commission the creation of a nine-year schedule – a sextuple round-robin – which would address these equity issues and others. These issues were formulated as soft constraints, some of which related to a nine-year period, and a schedule was successfully produced using a form of Simulated Annealing, operating over a variety of neighbourhoods. The new nine-year schedule is currently in operation.
KW - Sports
KW - Scheduling
KW - Heuristics
KW - cricket
KW - simulated annealing
U2 - 10.1080/01605682.2017.1415642
DO - 10.1080/01605682.2017.1415642
M3 - Journal article
VL - 69
SP - 1854
EP - 1862
JO - Journal of the Operational Research Society
JF - Journal of the Operational Research Society
SN - 0160-5682
IS - 11
ER -