Hi there.
I am doing the fixturing for a cricket competition which is getting increasingly difficult to schedule.
Originally, all our matches were played over 2 consecutive Saturdays ("2 Day match"), whereas now we have some grades which play a mixture of 2 Day matches and 1 Day matches, and some grades which play only 1 Day matches. Only one match can be played on a ground in a day.
Our season is based on 11 x 2 week rounds where balancing home and away matches is very important.
Grade 1 has 12 teams - a single round-robin schedule (11 x 2 Day matches) using 22 week Saturdays.
Grade 2 has 10 teams - a single round-robin schedule (9 x 2 Day matches) plus 4x 1Day matches (randomly picked) to make up 22 Saturdays.
Previously, Grade 3 teams were the 2nd side for clubs in Grade 1, and Grade 4 the 2nd side for clubs in Grade 2. They used the reverse fixture for those respective grades.
Grades 5-10 are 8 team grades with a single round-robin each other twice (7x2 Day matches plus 7x1Day matches) using 21 Saturdays. If a team played the 2Day match at home, then they played the 1Day match away.
Grades 11-13 are 8 or 10 team grades playing One Day matches only (18 x 1 Day matches).
Grades 1-4 must be played on turf surfaces of which each club has one. To date, fixturing this part of the draw has been relatively straightforward.
Grades 5 down was the difficult part, as there are a limited number of grounds. We use a paired round-robin system where each of the pairs 1&2, 3&4, 5&6, 7&8 have 1 home and 1 away each round. So if a club had teams in Grades 5, 7, 9 and 10 they might be given seeds of 1,2,1,2 respectively to exactly use 2 grounds.
(2 1) (3 4) (6 5) (7 8)
(3 1) (2 4) (5 7) (8 6)
(4 1) (6 3) (8 5) (2 7)
(1 5) (7 3) (6 2) (4 8)
(6 1) (8 3) (2 5) (4 7)
(1 7) (5 3) (8 2) (4 6)
(1 8) (3 2) (5 4) (7 6)
The problem is that we are now changing Grades 3&4 into 8 team grades using the same season format as Grades 5-10. They will no longer match up with Grades 1 & 2. Grades 3&4 turn into grades 3,4 & 5 with a topup of 2 teams to fill out the 24 spots.
I need to create a 12 team round robin fixture for Grade 1 and a 10 team one for Grade 2, that I can match up with the 8 team fixtures from Grades 3 down.
If the first team from a club is playing at home (in Grade 1 or 2) then the hard constraint is that the second team from that club must be playing away, and vice versa.
I have attached our round schedule for this year. "2-1" means Round 2 week 1. Note that we haven't been able to fit everything in this year, as due to Easter etc we are short of Saturdays. When this happens we play a 1 day match instead of a 2 day match. These rounds are highlighted in yellow. For grade 2 we just get rid of 2 couple of the extra 1 Day matches.
So, any suggestions on how to create matching schedules of differing sizes with differing match lengths would be appreciated.
Mike
