Scheduling English cricket umpires

This paper concerns a computer system which was devised to schedule umpires for the major cricket games played in England. The context of the work is discussed briefly, and the many constraints and objectives are described. An outline of the solution method, rather than exact details of the algorithms used, is given. In addition, two technical points concerning the exact formulation of the objective function are discussed, since they are probably relevant to many other applications. The results are described briefly.