Cow Corner Blog

No fooling Duckworth nor Lewis

Mon Jun 15 09:56PM

Their narrow defeat to the West Indies in the World Twenty20 crunch match means England have now failed to make the semi-final of six consecutive World Cups, be it the 50 over, 20 over or in this case, the nine over version.

But the home supporters walking out of The Oval bemoaning the thunderstorm and the subsequent apparent simplicity of the reduced target would be barking up the wrong tree.

Chasing 80 in nine overs may seem like a walk in the park but the Duckworth Lewis method for revised targets is one of science.

Created by Frank Duckworth and Tony Lewis (not the bloke who used to present the TV coverage from the BBC), originating from an undergraduate final-year project at the University of the West of England, it can produce results that are somewhat counterintuitive.

But it's certainly far better than any previous system. The Oval is not too far from Southfields, London's South African enclave, where they will remind you of the 1993 World Cup semi-final when their target to beat England in Sydney went from 22 off 13 balls to 22 off one ball under that particular system.

Instead of blaming D/L, look no further than your own batting - any side that fails to score a boundary for 40 minutes and 56 balls in a Twenty20 match has no right to be in a T20 semi-final.

A total of 160 was at least 15 runs below par and that's why WI were only chasing 80 from nine.

It was hailed a brave selection to leave out Dimitri Mascarenhas and play the extra bowler but given the evidence of the previous four matches it was foolhardy.

Dimi might have failed to find the boundary regularly against India but it left England with just one power player in their XI, Kevin Pietersen.

It's very well Ravi Bopara making a relatively sedate fifty (if he had faced every ball of the innings scoring at that rate England would have scored 140) if he has players around him who could swing the willow effectively.

But as David Lloyd so elegantly put it their rest of the middle order ‘av bats that sound like planks'.

Yet again the middle order played overs 12-16 like a 50 over game. There have may be thunder and lightning around the ground but the only electricity inside the stadium came when Stuart Broad managed to biff the last two balls.

But did the selectors have much choice? Do England simply not produce swashbuckling dynamic batsmen?

It is very easy to be Captain Hindsight after the event but once Andrew Flintoff had been ruled out, the hosts were desperately short of the old fashioned blacksmith approach.

Owais Shah and Rob Key offer as little as in the field as Samit Patel who, despite being what to bleep tests what Kim Jong-il is to international diplomacy, is one of the cleanest hitters in county cricket.

And would a new slimline Ian Blackwell bowling Roelof van der Merwe type left-arm darts and hitting it a country mile been a better option than a raw Adil Rashid?

While those two men are borderline selections that you could argue either way, there is one player currently playing county cricket few would argue could have made all the difference.

If only for a healthy Marcus Trescothick.

Comments1 - 30 of 31
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What was the point of leaving out Mascarenhas?
From parksfields on Mon Jun 15 10:36PM
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'Tres' back at the top of the order? Now there's a thought, even if he could only cope with home matches he'd be worth a shot.
From smiling.phases on Mon Jun 15 10:38PM
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Absolutely right, 56 balls without a boundary in T20 is absolutely criminally useless!
From soul.limbo on Mon Jun 15 10:45PM
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If the Duckworth/Lewis method is so good - and I'll admit, it's the best anyone has come up with so far - why does it fail to take into acoount that, during their 20 overs, England were allowed to use up to 11 batsmen, but the West Indies were allowed to use the same number of batsmen in less than half the overs? They should have been allowed to use a maximum of 5/6 batsmen, and once they were out, innings over.
It's all very well chasing half the runs off half the overs; but to make it completely fair, they should only be allowed to use half the batsmen.
From vllles on Mon Jun 15 11:26PM
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Twenty20 IS a simple game. and the D/L system is well documented
Batsmen are fellows with lumps of wood in their hands trying to hit a ball
Bowlers are fellows heaving the said round ball (some more legally than others)
Weathermen are the fellows who forecast thunderstorms for the Oval
24 hours BEFORE the game even started !!
PAUL COLLINGWOOD meanwhile is an even rarer animal -
a English Capt who just happens to BE English
Knowing the D/L system favours whoever bats 2nd
and the English weather as an Englishman
Wouldn't you think he would field 1st after winning the @#$%
or is THAT too simple ?
From yachtshelaa on Tue Jun 16 12:06AM
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We did have another big hitter, Graham Napier,never got a sniff,even in the warm up games,and being honest i don,t think luke wright is good enough for international cricket
From firewall77777 on Tue Jun 16 02:02AM
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Well written, the so called "20-20 specialists" were nowhere to be seen. Why did Napier not get a game? Once we had 4 wickets down, we were into the tail end. Foster, Sidebottom, Broad, Anderson, Swann and Rashid are all number 10's at best. Collingwood is NOT a 20/20 player in the slightest - he's only in the team because he's the captain. Look at the West Indies, they had 5 wickets down yet still had Sarwan and Chanderpaul at the crease, 2 well capable recognised batsmen. The England innings only had some momentum because of Pietersen. Duckworth/Lewis is not responsible for the England demise, it's the team not putting enough runs on the board that is. Shame on whoever selects the team!!
From swisstonydunn on Tue Jun 16 02:07AM
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every time england loses, many english people come up a lot of b/s, it seems like they are sore losers, england got a sound cut arse as they in the west indies. england follow australia,india and go home.
From victorgallion on Tue Jun 16 02:21AM
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Not sour grapes at all- England's attitude to limited overs is the most retarded in the world and West Indies deserve their win and I hope they do well in the semis. But, Duckworth/Lewis is nonsense- why can't they have played the full 20 in the second innings under lights?
From crazylegend86 on Tue Jun 16 02:52AM
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We were out captained as well, Gayle knew our batters wouldn't be able to hit boundaries and let them have singles. We would have lost after 20 overs as well but to not take account of the weather was stupid !!!
From bingo85uk on Tue Jun 16 05:04AM
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post 10 victorgallion i was wondering about your comment australia and india fare enough but how can england go home ?
From john.handley on Tue Jun 16 06:21AM
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Why was Stuart Broad not sent in to bat earlier???...
From markapawson on Tue Jun 16 08:17AM
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No complaints here about the result; England were not good enough through the whole tournament. HOWEVER!!!! That doesn't take away from the fact that the D/L system is fundamentally floored. Post 4 hit the nail on the head, its not the same trying to create a total from 20 overs with 11 men as it is trying to knock 80 off nine with the same number of potential batters. Even an idiot can see that, and it could just as easilly affect an ausie team, or the west indies or whatever.
Also, if you reduce the required runs and number of overs then the batters essentially find themselves in a situation similar to the end of an innings when they feel its ok to hit out as they don't need to preserve their wicket for very long. This should be taken into account with the equation to work out the required number of runs. Something needs to be done or rain shortened matches will continue to be a complete joke.
From gagwhall on Tue Jun 16 08:35AM
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What annoyed me were the committee meetings to decide field placings before every ball towards the end. I don't see Graham Smith doing that. All it did was upset the bowlers rhythm
. After each delay the next ball was inevitably poor - including the last one.
Norm, Nottingham.
From normanjowett on Tue Jun 16 09:33AM
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There is one serious failing with the D/L method that this rather blinkered agrument seems to ignore- The overs were reduced, as was the target for the West Indies but not their number of wickets. This really should be factored into any D/L equation and it gives any side chasing a small total a huge advantage if they know they have ten wickets to lose it say nine overs!!!!
From anaxagoras484 on Tue Jun 16 10:24AM
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why couldn't they play all 20 overs because they had the floodlights so when the windies came into bat they should have been able to continue through the 20 overs regardless
From turlandrob on Tue Jun 16 11:29AM
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"It's all very well chasing half the runs off half the overs" - This wasn't the case! It was half the runs in LESS than half the overs!
That's why the batting isn't reduced in DL method. The overs were reduced to less than half to compensate for the additional batting. WI were only given 9 overs for 80 runs. I think that was pretty fair on England cos 160 was easily attainable by WI with their batting line up. They had lost 5 weeks in 5 overs yet there was Chanderpaul & Sarwan in the middle & Ramdin & taylor left to come in. That is some depth.
Also, not sure why everyone is suggesting Broad should have gone in further up the order. He simple got a couple of luck strikes with last 2 balls and he knew thats all that was left. if he came in with 3-4 overs left he would not have tried to slog the ball & would have been out cheaply (as he has been recently a number of times). He was not the answer to the problem!
From shujaahmad2004 on Tue Jun 16 12:15PM
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my stupid SISTER plays Twenty20, it´s a GIRLY game (just sour grapes really - i love it, and she´s only a little bit daft)
From paul091054 on Tue Jun 16 12:24PM
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Stop finding reasons saying D/L is not right.....best team won and England was and is @#$% team in cricket and will never win another world cup....god save this ashes
From webexx82 on Tue Jun 16 01:27PM
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England made 161-6 off 120 balls.
Half the score at half the overs would've been 80 runs off 60 balls i.e. TEN overs.
They were given 9 overs to do it, so 54 balls... and the reasons for this were:
1. 160 is BELOW par at The Oval
2. England lost 6 wickets, and wickets are taken into account in the D/L method.
If you think coming out and achieving 9 runs and over for 9 overs is easy, then you're completely clueless. England have never achieved that run rate in a T20 match this year. Their batting has been poor, and their bowling has been average, and let's face it no-one expected a thing from them in a group containing the likes of WI, SA and India.
Few more points to consider while you're at it:
- WI's lowest score in 20 overs is 163, against a much better bowling attack in South Africa.
- WI's score at The Oval last time was 170 odd in 18 overs against a better bowling attack in Australia
- England had a huge element of luck in beating India, and really haven't deserved to go through as Michael Atherton said. No boundaries for 9 overs is nothing but pathetic.
-Poor team selection by Collingwood, he shouldn't even be in the team... I think he only took the captaincy to ensure he was in the team, instead of on merit.
-Poor shot selection by Pietersen, he knows he's the only boundary-hitter for England but his head took him as usual going for glory.
-Poor fielding by the West Indies only made the total look even better, as they shouldn't have even passed 140... which would have been 40 runs below par on that pitch.
-To those blaming Collingwood for batting first, Gayle said he'd have done the same at the t.oss. To those saying D/L method favours the second team, refer to the run rate comments earlier.
-Also no-one was complaining when England won 2 games by the D/L method when they toured the WI.. One was gifted to you by John Dyson... The other gave you 120 to chase in 20 overs, which I thought was ridiculous, yet the same people complaining now told me it was fair?
Hypocrites and sore losers always show up at the end of the day.
From wa.irvine on Tue Jun 16 04:10PM
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The problem with 80 from 9 is not that England have never managed it!! It is that WI had 10 wickets to do it with. ANY team could and should have knocked that total over....and any real cricket fan would in their hearts know that it is a HUGE ask to defend it.
From erock.t21 on Tue Jun 16 04:56PM
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England take Eoin Morgan a specialist T20 batter from Ireland and then dont play him !
From peter.wood95 on Tue Jun 16 06:27PM
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As A south African...it was the 1992 world cup.
From pnielsen51 on Wed Jun 17 08:08AM
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why everytime england lose to a team they consider lesser to them they blame something or someone or a system now they blamin the d/l if the result was the other way round it woukld of been a very good victory.the people incharge should not review the d/l system cause it being working.england should take their loses and chill and relised they not as good as they think they are.go no windies
From cummingsd4 on Wed Jun 17 09:59AM
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Hankering for ol' Mental is pointless. D/L has a very serious flaw, and that is the number of wickets. The FricaBeeyans had a massive advantage. Imagine chasing 160 - you get to 80 with no wickets down and nine overs to go. Very unfair. That's not to say England weren't @#$% - because they were.
From sommiewoman on Wed Jun 17 11:34AM
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Prior may not be the best wicket keeper, but his batting would have made the world of difference. As the number of wickets lost counts for nothing unless the game is drawn. Prior should play!
From don.mather on Thu Jun 18 04:51PM
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I agree the strangeness of picking Napier in the squad and then not giving him a game, not even in the warm ups. I could not understand why Robert Key was included. I agree with comments regarding Foster, he should be in the Test team, with Prior in the 20-20. As for Collingwood, I felt he was out of his depth and has started on the downslope. As for Duckworth-Lewis, it should not be used for 20-20.
If there was only time for 9 or ten overs, then replay the game as 5 overs a side. I once watched a Sunday League game at Chelmsford, that started in the evening. We had all been on the outfield as a bucket chain from 2.30. That was a 10 over match in the end. Essex v Somerset. Goochy and Co v Botham and Richards. Well worth the wait.
From tonypearce189 on Thu Jun 18 09:30PM
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Why do we need a method,,, why not come back again and play another day in football, tennis, golf, rugby, hockey, and many other sports there is no D/L method you win you win.
From gordonhatcher on Fri Jun 19 08:34AM
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Well written, well explained, and well understood wa.irvine; your comments are superb and show someone that actually understands not only the game of cricket but the D/L Method. I was at the now infamous game on Monday at the Oval - have to say it was like being at a football match at Old Trafford with the England fans' behaviour and had to listen to all the comments and abuse hurled at the WIndies before, during and after their win. Afterwards things did go a little bit quiet but comments like 'they got lucky, the rain saved them' etc.. then started; so it's nice to find someone that actually understands that England's lack of runs and loss of wickets in the first innings actually determined what the WIndies run chase would be for the second innings. Do agree though that maybe the amount of batsmen could be reduced in line with the revised D/L target for the chasing team.
From ajwilkinson41 on Fri Jun 19 02:27PM
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I don't think anyone from Coronation Street should be allowed to impose a 'method' in cricket, it's ludicrous !
From thaitiger666 on Sun Jun 21 07:46PM
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