Passing the paton back to 1877

[Zinzan]

Any bored trainspotters out there?

What's the least number of Test scorecards you can come up in linking a current test player, to others who played in their debut Test match & so on & so on to get us back to the 1st test played in 1877?

Or if there's no links going that far back due to WWI (although I'm pretty sure there are), as far as you can go.

Random example: Herath debuted back in 1999 2nd Test: Sri Lanka v Australia at Galle, Sep 22-26, 1999 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo, & Ranatunga played in that test. Ranatunga debuted in 1982 Only Test: Sri Lanka v England at Colombo (PSS), Feb 17-21, 1982 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo & Derek Underwood played in that test, Underwood debuted in 1966 3rd Test: England v West Indies at Nottingham, Jun 30-Jul 5, 1966 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo. So in that example, that's 3 test scorecards prior to Herath's debut to get to 1966.

Let us know your minimum path back to the 1st test in 1877 and post the scorecards.

 

[AndrewB]

Extending your list:
- Tom Graveney played in Underwood's first Test; his debut was in 1951 (Eng v SA at Manchester, 3rd Test) alongside Freddie Brown;
- Brown's debut was in 1931 (Eng v NZ at The Oval, 2nd Test) alongside Herbert Sutcliffe;
- Sutcliffe's debut was in 1924 (Eng v SA at Birmingham, 1st Test) alongside Frank Woolley;
- Woolley's debut was in 1909 (Eng v Aus at The Oval, 5th Test), Archie MacLaren's last Test;
- MacLaren's debut was in 1894-5 (Aus v Eng at Sydney, 1st Test), Jack Blackham's last Test;
- Blackham's debut was in the first Test of all.

(Woolley played alongside Freddie Brown, but not on Brown's debut).

 

[Zinzan]

Great stuff,

So that's 9 scorecards (including Herath's debut test) and prior to get the paton passed to the 1st ever test in 1877.

Be hard to beat that.

 

[Crazy Sam]

Pretty sure this came up on twitter yesterday, maybe Brydon Coverdale's.

 

[Zinzan]

Pretty sure this came up on twitter yesterday, maybe Brydon Coverdale's.

Just checked his feed.

He was talking about Brad Hogg & wrote;

Brad Hogg is so old that he's played first-class cricket against someone who played first-class cricket against Fred Titmus (Graham Gooch).

 

[Fred Tetanus]

Interesting topic. No idea if 9 can be beaten but I'd suggest it won't be as simple as looking at a players debut test and seeing who played. They could well have played with or against someone from several years earlier in their 2nd or 3rd test for example.

 

[Zinzan]

Interesting topic. No idea if 9 can be beaten but I'd suggest it won't be as simple as looking at a players debut test and seeing who played. They could well have played with or against someone from several years earlier in their 2nd or 3rd test for example.

You may well be right, just using debuts was an easy way to approach it,

Incidentally, a connection involving Tendulkar might be a good bet.

 

[Burgey]

Isn't it baton, not paton?

 

[vcs]

I'm just trying to think of a good algorithm. Interesting problem.

Greedy approach would work I think, sort by order of debut time, pick the overlapping player with the earliest debut time of all the ones overlapping with the current candidate. However, theoretically proving that this would give the optimal solution is difficult for greedy algorithms.

Hmm.. may not actually. Might have to use dynamic programming.

 

[Fred Tetanus]

Incidentally, a connection involving Tendulkar might be a good bet.

I feel like Tendulkar retired too recently to be of much use here. You'd be using two players and only getting back to 1989(?). Just a hunch and could be wrong for sure. I think in 10 years time he would be a no-brainer.

 

[vcs]

I think I know what we need to do here. Create a graph out of all the players ever to have played the game. An edge should exist between any two players if they have ever played together in a match. You have a set of players who played in the first Test ever, and a set of current players. Find the path through the graph from any node in the first set, to any node in the second, with the shortest number of hops (Djikstra's algorithm should do the trick).

 

[Zinzan]

I feel like Tendulkar retired too recently to be of much use here. You'd be using two players and only getting back to 1989(?). Just a hunch and could be wrong for sure. I think in 10 years time he would be a no-brainer.

Yeah, I was meaning cheating slightly and allowing it to be from 2012 or whenever he retired from Tests

 

[Howe_zat]

I think I know what we need to do here. Create a graph out of all the players ever to have played the game. An edge should exist between any two players if they have ever played together in a match. You have a set of players who played in the first Test ever, and a set of current players. Find the path through the graph from any node in the first set, to any node in the second, with the shortest number of hops (Djikstra's algorithm should do the trick).

you had me at 'graph'

xox

 

[Burgey]

Australia only and off the top of my head as I'm on the phone and CBF doing a cricinfo search

Warner
Clarke
Hayden
Border
I Chappell
Simpson
Harvey
Bradman
J Gregory
Armstrong
Syd Gregory
Blackham

That's 12. There might be a shorter list but was the best I could come up with.

 

[Red]

All these players played against or with the next listed:

Jack Blackham (1877 1894)

WG Grace (1880 - 1899)

Wilfred Rhodes (1899 - 1930)

George Headley (1930 - 1954)

Trevor Bailey (1949 - 1959)

Bob Simpson (1957 - 1978)

Sunny Gavaskar (1971 - 1987)

Imran Khan (1971 - 1992)

Sachin Tendulkar (1989 - 2013)

Dave Warner (2011 - ?)

 

[AndrewB]

All these players played against or with the next listed:

Jack Blackham (1877 1894)

WG Grace (1880 - 1899)

Wilfred Rhodes (1899 - 1930)

George Headley (1930 - 1954)

Trevor Bailey (1949 - 1959)

Bob Simpson (1957 - 1978)

Sunny Gavaskar (1971 - 1987)

Imran Khan (1971 - 1992)

Sachin Tendulkar (1989 - 2013)

Dave Warner (2011 - ?)

You can shorten that by replacing Gavaskar and Simpson with Colin Cowdrey.

 

[Spark]

Australia only and off the top of my head as I'm on the phone and CBF doing a cricinfo search

Warner
Clarke
Hayden
Border
I Chappell
Simpson
Harvey
Bradman
J Gregory
Armstrong
Syd Gregory
Blackham

That's 12. There might be a shorter list but was the best I could come up with.

Ponting played in Warner's debut, didn't he?

 

[Oasisbob]

Remarkably, in first class matches you can get from Anderson to WG Grace in 5 matches! See http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/cricket-chat/70844-anderson-1877-10-england-players.html#post3677127

 

[adub]

Nine looks about the best you can do.

You can also get to Arjuna and then through the list above via Misbah.

Going via Younis you also get 9:
Younis Khan 2001 1st Test: New Zealand v Pakistan at Auckland, Mar 8-12, 2001 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo
Wasim Akram 1985 2nd Test: New Zealand v Pakistan at Auckland, Jan 25-28, 1985 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo
Zaheer Abbas 1969 1st Test: Pakistan v New Zealand at Karachi, Oct 24-27, 1969 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo
Hanif Mohammad 1952 1st Test: India v Pakistan at Delhi, Oct 16-18, 1952 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo
Lala Armanath 1933 1st Test: India v England at Mumbai, Dec 15-18, 1933 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo
Harry Elliott 1928 5th Test: South Africa v England at Durban, Feb 4-8, 1928 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo
Herbie Taylor 1912 Australia v South Africa at Manchester, May 27-28, 1912 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo
Syd Gregory 1890 1st Test: England v Australia at Lord's, Jul 21-23, 1890 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo
Jack Blackham 1877 1st Test: Australia v England at Melbourne, Mar 15-19, 1877 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo

Could have got it to 8 if Frank Woolley had played in Lala's debut (he played his last test in 34 and played in Gregory's last back in 1912) the ****.

 

[vcs]

Similar concept to Erdos number.