Abstract:
Two distinct aspects of the application of probabilistic reasoning to cricket are considered here.
First, the career bowling figures of the members of one team in a limited-overs competition are
used to determine the team bowling strike rate and hence the probability of dismissing the other
team. This takes account of the chances of running out an opposing batsman and demonstrates
that the probability of dismissing the other team is approximately doubled when there is a good
likelihood of a run-out.
Second, we show that under suitable assumptions the probability distribution of the number of
scoring strokes made by a given batsman in any innings is geometric. With the further assumption
(which we show to be tenable) that the ratio of runs made to number of scoring strokes is a constant,
we are able to derive the expression (A/(A + 2))0/2 as the approximate probability of the batsman
scoring at least c runs (c ~ 1), where A is the batsman's average score over all past innings.
In both cases, the results are compared favourably with results from the history of cricket.
