Duckworth-Lewis System Revisited.

For the benefit of those who dont know what Duckworth-Lewis system means..It is a method used in the game or cricket to derive approximate score a team needs to score if match is shortened due to some match interruption.

The two main assests that duckworth system looks at are:

• Wickets
• Overs

Fair enough as these two are the most important assets in a cricket match. 

Now look at the scenario Bangladesh has 5 overs left and 3 wickets remaining(doesnt matter whoever it is) against Australian bowling and say if Australia has 5 overs remaining and 3 wickets remaining (Ricky Ponting,Craig White,Brett Lee, Stuart Clarke) against Bangladesh bowling.

Which one would you think more favourable to get to the target?? ;). Current duckworth-lewis system rates them as equally favourable by giving them equal targets. But shouldnt we take care of the fact that may be Australian wickets are valued more than the Bangladeshi wickets.

So you have the problem statement. But whats the solution to it? Okay i am not just a quizmaster here. Lets try to solve this together.

So what are the most important assets in a cricket match.

• Wickets
• Overs

Did I write the same as Mr Duckworth and Mr Lewis? :P.  Okay, lets give these guys credit for guessing the right assets. But these assets are not of equal value for each team. Take this for example:  Is a 2-bhk in Delhi  same as a 2-bhk in New York?? If your answer is no, your answer is same as mine.Okay lets start then.

• Overs are important but we should also take care whether out of the remaining overs we have a powerplay? What say? If first batting team had got 3 powerplays and second team got 2 and match is shortened, it doesnt look fair.
• If batsmen to follow is Rahul Dravid or Yuvraj Singh. I dont mean any disrespect for Dravid, infact i am a great fan of him and his game. I just meant to bring to notice the strike rate and form of batsmen to follow. So we can look at str. rate/ Bat Avg of the batsmen to follow for last 5 innings.
• Opposition bowling. However great a batsmen is, you always have a greater chance of scoring against Sreesanth than Brett Lee or Nathan Bracken or Dale Steyn. So we can incorporate last 5 innings of bowler.
• Or if its difficult to include individual performances...lets take average runs made by the team in last 5 innings and average runs conceeded by bowling team in last 5 overs.

I would just like to conclude by saying that Duckworth-Lewis system is by far the best system we have now for ODI but i think due  to changing environment like inclusion of powerplays and  increasing differences in talent pool of different countries, its time we include these factors in calculating the total. We dont want some day Hongkong beating Australia just because they had wickets left even though those wickets are not worth it.