HISTORY:


The D/L method was devised by two English statisticians, Frank Duckworth and Tony Lewis. It was first used in international cricket in the second game of the 1996/7 Zimbabwe versus England One Day International series, which Zimbabwe won by 7 runs,[2] and was formally adopted by the International Cricket Council in 2001 as the standard method of calculating target scores in rain shortened one-day matches.
Various different methods had been previously used to achieve the same task, including run-rate ratios, the score that the first team had achieved at the same point in their innings, and targets derived by totaling the best scoring overs in the initial innings. All of these methods have flaws that are easily exploitable
PRINCIPLE:
The essence of the D/L method is 'resources'. Each team is taken to have two 'resources' to use to make as many runs as possible: the number of overs they have to receive; and the number of wickets they have in hand. At any point in any innings, a team's ability to score more runs depends on the combination of these two resources. Looking at historical scores, there is a very close correspondence between the availability of these resources and a team's final score, a correspondence which D/L exploits.
Using a published table which gives the percentage of these combined resources remaining for any number of overs (or, more accurately, balls) left and wickets lost, the target score can be adjusted up or down to reflect the loss of resources to one or both teams when a match is shortened one or more times. This percentage is then used to calculate a target (sometimes called a 'par score') that is usually a fractional number of runs. If the second team passes the target then the second team is taken to have won the match; if the match ends when the second team has exactly met (but not passed) the target (rounded down to the next integer) then the match is taken to be a tie
UPDATES:
The published table that underpins the D/L method is regularly updated, most recently in 2004, as it became clear that one-day matches were achieving significantly higher scores than in previous decades, affecting the historical relationship between resources and runs.
At the same time as this update, the D/L method was also split into a Professional Edition and a Standard Edition.[5] The main difference is that while the Standard Edition preserves the use of a single table and simple calculation – suitable for use in any one-day cricket match at any level – the Professional Edition uses substantially more sophisticated statistical modeling, and requires the use of a computer. The Professional Edition has been in use in all international one-day cricket matches since early 2004

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