Published: Jan 16, 2015, 03:13 AM (IST)
Edited: Jan 16, 2015, 03:13 AM (IST)
Mumbai: Jan 15, 2015
Indian engineer V Jayadevan, whose VJD method is the Cricket Board-approved process used in the domestic one-day tournaments, has pointed out some anomalies in the ICC-approved D/L method to be used in the February 14-March 29 World Cup.
Jayadevan, through an e-mail to PTI, claimed that the Duckworth-Lewis method used for weather-interrupted limited over games if a flawed one and his VJD method is superior in all respects through some examples.
“Suppose the interruption occurs when team-1 is at 104/0 in 20 overs. The 20 over D/L target for team-2 is 170 runs which looks reasonable. Suppose the team-1 had scored only half of that in 20 overs (i.e. 52/0), the target for team-2 is 154 runs!
“The target for team-2 for a team-1’s score of 46/0 in 20 overs is 136 runs. When the score is 6 runs more (46 to 52) the increase in target is of 18 runs (154-136). For a further 52 runs increase (52 to 104), the increase in target is just 16 runs,” Jayadevan said.
“Let us look at one more example. If team-1 is at 106/3 in 22 overs when the match is interrupted, the target for team-2 in 22 overs is 165 runs. Had team-1 made this 106 in 24 overs, still the target for team-2 in 22 overs would be 165.
“That means, if team-1 were 106/0 in 22 overs and do not score any run in the next two overs, there will not be any change in the target of team-2 in 22 overs.
“Suppose team-1 blasts 20 runs in two overs and makes their score to 126 in 24 overs, the target for team-2 is increased to 169 runs, i.e. by a mere 4 runs.
“It requires only commonsense, not any great expertise, to realise that this is rubbish,” said Jayadevan about the D/L system that was introduced to the international cricket in 1998 as the first scientific method to set target scores in interrupted limited over matches.
Jayadevan claimed his method does not have such anomalies.
“During the last 17 years, the D/L system had around 10 versions and if you carefully examine the huge differences in targets between the different versions, you can realize that they are still desperately struggling to find a right
“By 2009, D/L released their Windows version named “Wincoda”, which is an extremely user friendly and elegant software. But this also made it easier for the critics to analyze the drawbacks of the system,” said Jayadevan.
“It is necessary to make changes in the system to cope up with the changes in scoring pattern over the years, but if we analyze the different versions of D/L systems, we can understand that the changes introduced in different versions are not the kind of simple statistical updating, but are trials or adjustments to eliminate the anomalies that existed in previous versions.”
Jayadevan hit out at the International Cricket Council for their continued backing of the D/L system and claims the one used in the 2011 World Cup was full of “silly errors”.
“In September 2013, after submitting Wincoda 4.0 version, Duckworth and Lewis retired as consultants to ICC.
The successors have released the new DLS 1.0 version in September 2014 and ICC is going to experiment this for the World Cup 2015.
“Even the biggest enthusiasts of D/L system were not very happy with its performance under the T20 situations. The prime aim of the successors was also to address this issue.
Though they have partly succeeded in this attempt, in the process they have messed up the ODI section,” Jayadevan claimed.
