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Technology is being used increasingly in sport to assist, and in some cases replace judges and referees. The photo finish has been used to help the steward decide close horse races for more than a hundred years. In some sports, such as swimming, we have seen adjudication enhanced by electronic timing. In tennis we had the electronic service line machine for many years, and now a device for picking up net cords. More recently, some forms of Rugby have used a video referee to decide on the legality of tries. Cricket followed suit, allowing umpires to refer decisions on run outs, stumpings and catches to a third umpire with access to video footage. In many other sports the media use video replays or other technology (such as the hot spot in cricket) to provide evidence for or against the umpire’s decision.

Statistical methods can be useful in rating non-elite tennis players. This paper shows how clubs can use simple optimization techniques to rate their club's players in doubles tennis competitions. Even though clubs lack all relevant information, the effects of home advantage, position played, partner and strength of team opposition can be taken into account and evaluated. The results from all competing clubs, available to the body organizing the competition, are used to rate all players in the competition, and validate the results that were obtained with limited information. We show a home ground advantage exists in non-elite doubles tennis. A simple exponential smoothing method of rating players is then tested, and shown to produce reasonable results.

Cricket teams are usually listed on the scoreboard in expected batting order, and although captains can choose to send in any of the remaining batsmen when a wicket falls, they rarely depart from the usual batting order. By optimizing a simplified model using dynamic programming, this paper shows that in all forms of cricket significant increases in expected score result if captains allow a variable batting order and base their decision on the state of the game, rather than using a set batting order.

Desirable qualities of a tournament are fairness (the better the player, the better his chance of success), balance (few one-sided matches) and efficiency (long enough to benefit the more skillful yet being completed within schedule). The World Professional Snooker Championship is examined to see how well it meets these criteria.

In cricket, a rain-affected pitch can make batting more difficult than normal. Several other conditions such as poor light or an initially lively pitch, may also result in difficulties for the batsmen. In this note, we refer to all of them as ‘sticky wickets’. On sticky wickets, lower order batsmen are often sent into ‘hold the fort’ until conditions improve. In this paper, a stochastic dynamic programming model is used to examine the appropriateness of this policy. The model suggests that the tactic is often optimal when the sticky wicket persists until the end of the day's play, but not often when the sticky wicket is transitory. In some circumstances, it is worthwhile, on a normal wicket near the end of the day, to send in a lower order batsman to hold the fort (a night watchman): when the wicket is sticky, this tactic is even more worthwhile.

In cricket, when a batsman is dismissed towards the end of a day's play, he is often replaced by a lower-order batsman (a ‘night watchman’), in the hope that the remaining recognised batsmen can start their innings on the following day. A dynamic programming analysis suggests that the common practice of using a lower-order batsman is often sub-optimal. Towards the end of a day's play, when the conventional wisdom seems to be to use a night watchman, it may be best to send in the next recognised batsman in the batting order. Sending in a night watchman may be good judgement when there are several recognised batsman and several lower order batsmen still to play (say four of each). However, with smaller numbers (two of each, for example), then, with very few overs left to play, it may be better to send in a recognised batsman.

Luck can play a big part in tournament success, and progress is not necessarily the best measure of performance. A linear model is used to fit least squares ratings to margins of victory in the cricket World Cup. The Duckworth/Lewis rain interruption rules are used to project a winning second innings score and create a margin of victory in runs, equivalent to that used when the team batting first wins. Results show that, while the better teams progressed through the first round of the competition, some injustices occurred in the Super-Six round. This appears to be due to the double counting of selected matches. Ordering teams by average margin of victory gives similar results to the more complicated linear model, and its use as a tie breaker is suggested. Publication of the margin of victory as estimated by the Duckworth/Lewis method for second innings victories in all one-day matches would provide a common margin of victory suitable for analysis.

In Australian rules football, points are scored when the ball passes over the goal line. Six points are awarded for a goal when the ball passes between the two centre posts, and one point for a ‘behind’, when the ball passes between a centre post and an adjacent outer post. After a behind, the defending team has a free kick from the goal line. It may be worthwhile, particularly in the closing stages of a game, for a defending team voluntarily to concede a behind, by themselves passing the ball between the two outer posts, either to avert the possibility of an imminent goal or to increase the probability of scoring a goal themselves. A dynamic programming model is used to analyse this situation.