Computing the Runs that Should Be Scored Every over When Chasing a Target in Limited-overs Cricket Using the A* Algorithm

Taking calculated risks against bowlers plays an imperative role in chasing down a target in cricket. Thus, it becomes important for teams to calculate how many runs they should score off every over they face in an innings. The runs a team should score off an over is a function of the difficulty of scoring against the bowler bowling that over, the runs that have already been scored, the target, and the difficulty of scoring runs against the rest of the bowlers. However, the runs that can be scored in an over produces a state space with a branching factor of 37. Such a large state space makes using an uninformed search algorithm impractical. This research proposes the use of the A* algorithm to search the state space to find the number of runs that should be scored off every over during a run chase.