From: sidi@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Sadiq Yusuf)
Subject: SOLUTION !! ( A CRICKET PROBLEM - LOGIC )
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston Illinois.
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 19:07:19 GMT



	Well, got a few messages offering the solutions, some right and
some wrong ! Sorry about not replying, had a mail crash here (again :-( ),
and lost a few right after I read them - don't have the addresses anymore.
Anyway, here is the solution . Pretty neat I thought !

			Sadiq [ logician extraordinaire ] Yusuf



A CRICKET PROBLEM

 	I made a cricket problem once,' said Jorkens. 'Only one, mind you.
But it is not a thing you can do every day. It went like this: there's two to win, and 
the last two men are in. The other side have a very fast bowler, and a ball 
catches the batsman on the inside of the knee, and drops him and he can't get 
up. There's a nerve there, you know. But the ball goes away off his knee 
through the slips, and is good for four if he could run it. But he can't. He has 
fallen just outside his crease, and of course he can roll back all right, in fact he 
can reach the crease with his bat. But he can't run. That is the situation. And 
it's White to play and win. '                          
	'What do you mean?' asked one or two of us.
	'Well, of course in cricket both sides wear white, ' said Jorkens. 'But 
that's how one would put it at chess. What I mean is, it's the batting side to 
win the match off this ball that has gone through the slips for four, if you can 
only run it, or even run two of them. '
	'Yes, there is a nerve there, ' said someone. 'If a fast one got you there, 
you'd be pretty completely paralysed for a while, so far as that leg was 
concerned. The right leg, I suppose.'
	'Yes, the right leg,' saidJorkens.
	'Why not hop it on the left,' said another.
	'No,' said Jorkens; 'You couldn't hop two runs on one foot while there 
was only time to run four in the ordinary way, especially when you would 
have had to have scrambled up off the ground before you got started.'
	'Well,' said Terbut, 'it simply can't be done.'
	'If there's no solution, ' said Jorkens, 'it's not a problem at all. But if it 
can be done, it seems a problem all right to me, because you can none of you 
get it. '
	A curious silence fell on the Club.... I don't know how long we sat 
without speaking.
	'The other batsman might carry him for two runs,'  said one of the 
cricketers.
	'No,' said Jorkens, 'because he would have to do one run before he got to 
him and one more to get back to his own wicket afterwards; so that he would 
have to run four altogether, two of them carrying a man, in the time that, as 
my problem states, was only enough for four ordinary runs without any such 
handicaps. '
	Terbut repeated monotonously, 'It simply can't be done. '
	'Do you give it up?'
	I think the rest of us looked as if we should like to hear.
					
				Lord Dunsany, Fourth Book of Jorkens




A PROBLEM SOLVED

	'They just ran the two runs,' said Jorkens.
	'I thought you said he couldn't move,' said Terbut.
	'He didn't move,' answered Jorkens. 'He pushed back his bat when he 
fell, and put it inside the crease; and when the other man came up to him 
he lifted it. The two batsmen crossed, and the other man ran back. And 
that happened twice. The man on his legs ran four runs, and the man lying 
down lifted his bat from the crease twice and returned to it. Of course he 
didn't get to the other end, so that his first run was a short run. But he got 
back all right: he had only an inch to go. His third run was a short one too, 
by very nearly twenty yards, but the distance of a short run doesn't 
matter, so long as it's short; and he got back again when he put his bat 
down. Four runs and two short is, you see, two runs, which just won the 
match. '
'I thought it was something like that,' grumbled Terbut.
'Ah, but you see,' said Jorkens, 'you didn't think it quick enough.'

			Lord Dunsany, The Fourth Book of Jorkens