At Headlingley in the Ashes test in 2001 Australia declared their second innings and set England a final innings target of 315. England won. This was small consolation however, as they had  already lost the series. This is an example of a decision made in  sport at the highest level that could have benefited from a 'bit of  Statistics'.

Declarations in test cricket are considered in this talk and we use a 'bit of Statistics' in the shape of regression modelling to develop an aid for captains. In fact, decision problems in sport abound - when to commit a professional foul in football is a classic - early on in a game model leaving your side with ten players would be foolish; however late on, when the score is close, it may be sensible to do so.

Sports men and women have to make decisions during competition, and the extent to which they do so varies from sport to sport. In a more obscure sport - mountain marathons - competitors are continually making decisions: 'where am I', 'which way?' and 'how fast?'. Mountain marathons are mountain running events with navigation from point to point. Route choices have to be made on the run. Again a bit of that old favourite, regression, can help and is used to model running times.

Sailing and Formula One motor racing are other good examples where modelling can be beneficial. Sport is  big business now, so we are not just doing the statistics here 'for sport', but we are doing serious applied statistics in sport!

(Philip Scarf is senior lecturer at Salford, having got a BSc in Probability and Statistics from Sheffield in 1984 and a PhD in Statistics from UMIST in 1989. His research interests  include stochastic modelling with applications in sport and maintenance and reliability. He is a keen orienteer and  cyclist, and occasional club cricketer.)

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map of Xaverian College neighbourhood
a JPEG of the area
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