On the Game of Hand Cricket

Athreya Shankar
February 21, 2015

1 Introduction
Hand cricket is a game commonly played among school students in India. It is a game loosely based on the more
popularly known game of ‘rock, paper, scissors’. The rules of the game are quite straightforward. It is a two-player
game where each player uses one hand to cast a number with his hand. While one player ‘bats’, the other ‘bowls’
and vice-versa. Each player can cast a number in the range 1 to 6. The numbers 1 to 5 are cast by displaying the
relevant number of fingers, whereas 6 is denoted by a ‘thumbs up’ sign. If, while playing, both the players cast the
same number, then the batsman is deemed out. But if the batsman and the bowler cast different numbers, then the
number cast by the batsman is added to his existing score, which is taken to be 0 at the beginning of the game. This
way, the batsman accumulates ‘runs’ until he gets out. Then, it is the turn of the second player (who bowled first) to
bat now, while the first player (who batted first) bowls. The objective of the second player now is to surpass the score
made by the first player. If he succeeds, then he wins the game, otherwise the first player is the winner. If they end up
on the same score, then the game is said to have been tied. Who gets to bat or bowl first is either decided by a round
of traditional ‘rock, paper, scissors’, or by a round of ‘odd or even’, wherein the sum of the numbers that will be cast
by the two players- again each between 1 to 6- is predicted in advance by one of the players, and if he predicts right,
he gets to choose to bat or bowl first.
While the game is pretty simple to play, it lends itself to some very interesting statistical analysis. In order to
analyze the game, I assume that the game is played between two ‘ideal’ players who each cast a number between 1
to 6 with equal probability 1/6. Then, the sample space, and the probability of each outcome, is the same as a pair of
dice rolled together, a problem encountered often in elementary probability textbooks. First, lets look at some trivial
calculations.

2 Getting out probability and average score

As mentioned earlier, the batsman is out when the batsman and bowler cast the same number. From the sample space,
it is clear that there are 6 possible ways that this can happen. This means that in any one round (henceforth called a
‘shot’), the probability of getting out q is 1/6. Thus, the survival probability p is then 5/6. In order to get out on the nth
trial, a batsman must survive in each of the previous n − 1 trials and get out on the nth trial. Thus, G(n), the probability
of getting out on the nth trial is a geometric distribution given by

G(n) = pn−1 q, (1)

with p = 5/6 and q = 1/6. The average number of shots that the batsman takes to get out is then 1/q = 6. This means
that on an average, the batsman has 5 scoring shots. On each shot, he is equally likely to score anywhere between 1 to
6 runs, which amounts to an average of 3.5 runs per shot. Thus, the average score, in a game of hand cricket is 17.5.

3 Score probability
Now I address the following more interesting question: What is the probability P(X) of the batsman scoring a total of
X runs in a game of hand cricket? Note that a score of X can be scored in a variety of different ways: The number of
trials n taken to score X can vary widely, so can the pattern of single-shot scores for a given number of trials. As an
illustration, the score 7 can be scored in two shots as 3+4, in three shots as 3+3+1 and so on. But, so can it be scored

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as 5+2 in two shots and 2+2+3 in three shots. Thus any attempt to calculate P(X) must take into account the multiple
ways in which X can be scored. For higher scores, it becomes very difficult to list down every possibility by hand, but
a numerical program can solve the problem quite easily.
The philosophy is as follows. A score of X can be scored in the slowest possible way using X shots in which 1 run
is scored in each shot. Thus, the maximum number of trials required (nmax (X)) is X. It can be scored in the fastest way
by scoring 6 runs of every shot to get as close to the score as possible and then score the remaining runs in the final
shot. This means the minimum number of turns required nmin (X) is X/6 if X is a perfect multiple of 6, and X/6 + 1 if
it is not (Here / denotes integer division). Thus, we need to consider all n such that X/6 ≤ n ≤ X or X/6 + 1 ≤ n ≤ X
as the case may be. P(X, n), the probability of scoring X runs in n shots, can be found in a recursive manner as
1 1 1
P(X, n) = P(X − 1, n − 1) + P(X − 2, n − 1) + . . . + P(X − 6, n − 1). (2)
6 6 6
Ultimately, the successive recursions boil down to summing suitably over the single-shot probabilities P(1, 1), . . . ,
P(6, 1) which are all of course, 16 . Then, the total probability of scoring X runs in a single innings of hand cricket P(X)
is given by
nmax (X)
P(X) = ∑ P(X, n). (3)
n=nmin (X)

4 Results
Figure 1a shows the probability P(X) of scoring X runs in a single innings of hand cricket. It is somewhat of a suprise
that the most probable score is, in fact, 0, with a probability of 16 . This amounts to getting out on the first shot itself.
Considering the non-zero scores, we see that the most probable score is 6. This is most likely an artefact of the fact
that 6 is the maximum number of runs that can be scored in a single shot. Further, since 6 can be scored in more ways
than scores of 1,2,. . .,5, it ends up having a higher probability than any of these scores. For X > 6, we see the effects
of an interesting trade-off between the increasing number of ways to score X and the decreasing probabilities of each
of these ways. As a result, the curve is a series of bumps in the region X > 6, with the bumps becoming progressively
smoother until the curve looks like a smoothly decreasing function. Each of these bumps too appear to have a width
of around 6 runs, which is again likely an artefact of the game design.

0.18 0.18

0.16 0.16

0.14 0.14

0.12 0.12
Probability

Probability

0.1 0.1

0.08 0.08

0.06 0.06

0.04 0.04

0.02 0.02

0 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 0 5 10 15 20
Score Score

(a) P(X) versus X (b) Enlarged view of the region X ∈ [0, 20]

Figure 1: Probability P(X) of scoring X runs in a single innings of hand cricket as a function of the score X.

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 Figure 2 shows the number of ways in which X runs can be scored in a single innings of hand cricket on a semi-log
plot. We see that there are roughly 2X ways to score X runs, as indicated by the near perfect linear fit shown in figure
2. This is a mind-boggling result: As an example, there are ∼1024 ways to score a paltry 10 runs, and ∼ 1.126 × 1015
ways to score a half-century, that is 50 runs!

160 linear fit: f(x) = 0.988*x -0.942

140

120

100
log2(N(X))

80

60

40

20

-20
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
Score X

Figure 2: Log to the base 2 of the total number of ways N(X) to score X runs in a single innings of hand cricket. A
linear fit with slope ≈ 1 shows that the number of ways to score X is roughly 2X .

5 Conclusion
In this article, I have analyzed the statistics of the game of hand cricket. First, we saw that the probability of getting
out in the nth trial follows a geometric distribution. From this it was trivially shown that the average number of scoring
shots before getting out is 5, and that the average score is 17.5 in a single innings of hand cricket. Next, I considered
the question of calculating the probability of scoring X runs in a single innings of hand cricket, and I presented a
recursive model for solving this problem. The most probable score is surprisingly found to be 0- a result that is borne
out by the math, but is not very intuitive. The most probable non-zero score is found to be 6, and the profile of the
probability distribution was briefly discussed. Finally, we see that the number of ways in which X runs can be scored
is ∼ 2X , which is a staggering number of possibilities for even X ∼ mathcalO(10). Thus, we see that the game of hand
cricket, just like the game of cricket itself, is bursting with numbers and statistics that provide for interesting analysis
even in the simplest case of an ideal game where the two players are just random number generators. When played
between humans who are second-guessing the opponent’s move at every turn, the possibilies are truly endless.

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6 Supplementary data
Total probability and number of ways of scoring X runs in a single innings of hand cricket

Score Probability Number o f Ways Score Probability Number o f Ways

0 0.166667 1 76 0.000946498 2 . 1 0 7 2 1 e +22
1 0.0231481 1 77 0.00089943 4 . 1 7 9 8 2 e +22
2 0.0263632 2 78 0.000854701 8 . 2 9 1 0 2 e +22
3 0.0300247 4 79 0.000812197 1 . 6 4 4 5 9 e +23
4 0.0341948 8 80 0.000771807 3 . 2 6 2 1 9 e +23
5 0.0389441 16 81 0.000733426 6 . 4 7 0 8 2 e +23
6 0.044353 32 82 0.000696953 1 . 2 8 3 5 4 e +24
7 0.027365 63 83 0.000662294 2 . 5 4 6 0 1 e +24
8 0.0279507 125 84 0.000629358 5 . 0 5 0 2 2 e +24
9 0.0281712 248 85 0.00059806 1 . 0 0 1 7 5 e +25
10 0.0279137 492 86 0.000568319 1 . 9 8 7 0 6 e +25
11 0.0270413 976 87 0.000540057 3 . 9 4 1 5 e +25
12 0.0253882 1936 88 0.0005132 7 . 8 1 8 2 8 e +25
13 0.0227542 3840 89 0.000487679 1 . 5 5 0 8 2 e +26
14 0.0221138 7617 90 0.000463427 3 . 0 7 6 1 8 e +26
15 0.0213031 15109 91 0.000440381 6 . 1 0 1 8 6 e +26
16 0.0203492 29970 92 0.000418481 1 . 2 1 0 3 5 e +27
17 0.0192986 59448 93 0.00039767 2 . 4 0 0 8 4 e +27
18 0.0182232 117920 94 0.000377894 4 . 7 6 2 2 6 e +27
19 0.0172281 233904 95 0.000359102 9 . 4 4 6 3 4 e +27
20 0.0164605 463968 96 0.000341244 1 . 8 7 3 7 6 e +28
21 0.0156754 920319 97 0.000324274 3 . 7 1 6 7 6 e +28
22 0.0148937 1 . 8 2 5 5 3 e +06 98 0.000308148 7 . 3 7 2 5 e +28
23 0.014136 3 . 6 2 1 0 9 e +06 99 0.000292824 1 . 4 6 2 4 e +29
24 0.013419 7 . 1 8 2 7 3 e +06 100 0.000278262 2 . 9 0 0 7 8 e +29
25 0.0127518 1 . 4 2 4 7 5 e +07 101 0.000264424 5 . 7 5 3 9 5 e +29
26 0.0121301 2 . 8 2 6 1 2 e +07 102 0.000251274 1 . 1 4 1 3 4 e +30
27 0.0115286 5 . 6 0 5 8 4 e +07 103 0.000238779 2 . 2 6 3 9 5 e +30
28 0.0109527 1 . 1 1 1 9 6 e +08 104 0.000226904 4 . 4 9 0 7 3 e +30
29 0.0104053 2 . 2 0 5 6 7 e +08 105 0.00021562 8 . 9 0 7 7 3 e +30
30 0.00988715 4 . 3 7 5 1 4 e +08 106 0.000204898 1 . 7 6 6 9 2 e +31
31 0.00939661 8 . 6 7 8 4 4 e +08 107 0.000194708 3 . 5 0 4 8 4 e +31
32 0.00893061 1 . 7 2 1 4 4 e +09 108 0.000185025 6 . 9 5 2 1 4 e +31
33 0.00848625 3 . 4 1 4 6 2 e +09 109 0.000175824 1 . 3 7 9 0 1 e +32
34 0.00806369 6 . 7 7 3 1 8 e +09 110 0.000167081 2 . 7 3 5 3 9 e +32
35 0.00766245 1 . 3 4 3 5 2 e +10 111 0.000158772 5 . 4 2 5 8 7 e +32
36 0.00728149 2 . 6 6 4 9 8 e +10 112 0.000150876 1 . 0 7 6 2 7 e +33
37 0.0069196 5 . 2 8 6 2 e +10 113 0.000143373 2 . 1 3 4 8 6 e +33
38 0.00657557 1 . 0 4 8 5 6 e +11 114 0.000136243 4 . 2 3 4 6 8 e +33
39 0.00624848 2 . 0 7 9 9 1 e +11 115 0.000129468 8 . 3 9 9 8 3 e +33
40 0.00593768 4 . 1 2 5 6 7 e +11 116 0.00012303 1 . 6 6 6 1 8 e +34
41 0.0056424 8 . 1 8 3 6 2 e +11 117 0.000116911 3 . 3 0 5 e +34
42 0.00536184 1 . 6 2 3 2 9 e +12 118 0.000111097 6 . 5 5 5 7 4 e +34
43 0.00509522 3 . 2 1 9 9 3 e +12 119 0.000105573 1 . 3 0 0 3 9 e +35
44 0.00484183 6 . 3 8 6 9 9 e +12 120 0.000100322 2 . 5 7 9 4 2 e +35
45 0.00460103 1 . 2 6 6 9 1 e +13 121 9 . 5 3 3 3 5 e −05 5 . 1 1 6 5 e +35
46 0.00437222 2 . 5 1 3 0 3 e +13 122 9 . 0 5 9 2 6 e −05 1 . 0 1 4 9 e +36
47 0.0041548 4 . 9 8 4 8 e +13 123 8 . 6 0 8 7 5 e −05 2 . 0 1 3 1 4 e +36
48 0.00394819 9 . 8 8 7 7 5 e +13 124 8 . 1 8 0 6 4 e −05 3 . 9 9 3 2 2 e +36
49 0.00375184 1 . 9 6 1 3 2 e +14 125 7 . 7 7 3 8 2 e −05 7 . 9 2 0 8 9 e +36
50 0.00356527 3 . 8 9 0 4 4 e +14 126 7 . 3 8 7 2 3 e −05 1 . 5 7 1 1 7 e +37
51 0.00338796 7 . 7 1 7 e +14 127 7 . 0 1 9 8 7 e −05 3 . 1 1 6 5 5 e +37
52 0.00321948 1 . 5 3 0 7 3 e +15 128 6 . 6 7 0 7 7 e −05 6 . 1 8 1 9 4 e +37
53 0.00305938 3 . 0 3 6 3 3 e +15 129 6 . 3 3 9 0 4 e −05 1 . 2 2 6 2 4 e +38
54 0.00290724 6 . 0 2 2 8 2 e +15 130 6 . 0 2 3 8 e −05 2 . 4 3 2 3 5 e +38
55 0.00276266 1 . 1 9 4 6 8 e +16 131 5 . 7 2 4 2 4 e −05 4 . 8 2 4 7 6 e +38
56 0.00262528 2 . 3 6 9 7 4 e +16 132 5 . 4 3 9 5 8 e −05 9 . 5 7 0 3 2 e +38
57 0.00249472 4 . 7 0 0 5 7 e +16 133 5 . 1 6 9 0 7 e −05 1 . 8 9 8 3 5 e +39
58 0.00237066 9 . 3 2 3 9 7 e +16 134 4 . 9 1 2 0 1 e −05 3 . 7 6 5 5 4 e +39
59 0.00225277 1 . 8 4 9 4 9 e +17 135 4 . 6 6 7 7 4 e −05 7 . 4 6 9 2 6 e +39
60 0.00214074 3 . 6 6 8 6 1 e +17 136 4 . 4 3 5 6 2 e −05 1 . 4 8 1 5 9 e +40
61 0.00203428 7 . 2 7 7 e +17 137 4 . 2 1 5 0 4 e −05 2 . 9 3 8 8 6 e +40
62 0.00193312 1 . 4 4 3 4 5 e +18 138 4 . 0 0 5 4 2 e −05 5 . 8 2 9 4 6 e +40
63 0.00183699 2 . 8 6 3 2 1 e +18 139 3 . 8 0 6 2 4 e −05 1 . 1 5 6 3 2 e +41
64 0.00174563 5 . 6 7 9 4 1 e +18 140 3 . 6 1 6 9 5 e −05 2 . 2 9 3 6 6 e +41
65 0.00165882 1 . 1 2 6 5 6 e +19 141 3 . 4 3 7 0 8 e −05 4 . 5 4 9 6 7 e +41
66 0.00157633 2 . 2 3 4 6 2 e +19 142 3 . 2 6 6 1 6 e −05 9 . 0 2 4 6 4 e +41
67 0.00149794 4 . 4 3 2 5 6 e +19 143 3 . 1 0 3 7 4 e −05 1 . 7 9 0 1 1 e +42
68 0.00142345 8 . 7 9 2 3 4 e +19 144 2 . 9 4 9 3 9 e −05 3 . 5 5 0 8 4 e +42
69 0.00135266 1 . 7 4 4 0 3 e +20 145 2 . 8 0 2 7 2 e −05 7 . 0 4 3 3 8 e +42
70 0.00128539 3 . 4 5 9 4 4 e +20 146 2 . 6 6 3 3 4 e −05 1 . 3 9 7 1 1 e +43
71 0.00122147 6 . 8 6 2 0 8 e +20 147 2 . 5 3 0 8 9 e −05 2 . 7 7 1 2 9 e +43
72 0.00116073 1 . 3 6 1 1 5 e +21 148 2 . 4 0 5 0 3 e −05 5 . 4 9 7 0 8 e +43
73 0.00110301 2 . 6 9 9 9 5 e +21 149 2 . 2 8 5 4 3 e −05 1 . 0 9 0 3 9 e +44

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74 0.00104815 5 . 3 5 5 5 8 e +21 150 2 . 1 7 1 7 8 e −05 2 . 1 6 2 8 8 e +44
75 0.000996031 1 . 0 6 2 3 2 e +22