Wright, M B (2003) Scheduling fixtures for New Zealand cricket. Working Paper. The Department of Management Science, Lancaster University.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
This paper describes the problem faced every year by New Zealand Cricket in scheduling the principal inter-regional fixtures. This is a combinatorial optimization problem with few constraints but many objectives, which are described in detail. A technique known as Subcost-Guided Simulated Annealing is used to solve this problem, producing one or more schedules of high quality. One particular feature of the problem requires great care - the determination of adequate neighbourhoods for such a tightly constrained problem, where most simple changes lead to infeasibility. The approach adopted is to use a complex and unorthodox definition of a perturbation, each one leading to several possible neighbouring solutions which are generated by means of a tree search procedure. The system will be used in practice for the 2003-4 cricket season and beyond.