English statistician Frank Duckworth (84) passed away on June 21. He, along with fellow statistician Tony Lewis, has had a greater impact on cricket than many who have actually played the game.
- The duo co-invented the Duckworth-Lewis method, used to fairly determine results and set targets in rain-truncated matches.
DLS (Duckworth-Lewis-Stern) method
- The method was first used in international cricket in 1997. The method was fully adopted by the ICC in 1999.
- In 2014, the DL method became the DLS (Duckworth-Lewis-Stern) method in 2014, after Australian statistician Steven Stern made some crucial updates to better reflect modern scoring trends.
- The DL method converts all possible combinations of balls and wickets in hand to a combined “resources remaining” figure, which is expressed in percentage — full 50 overs, and 10 wickets in hand means 100% resources available.
- Target scores for a team batting second can be adjusted (either up or down) from the total of the team batting first, simply based on the number of resources either team has lost.
- The true achievement of Duckworth and Lewis was calculating the proportion between total runs that can be scored, and the resources remaining (both runs and balls).
