Who the hell in this world is Duckworth Lewis?

The D/L method was created by two English statisticians its not a single name, Frank Duckworth and Tony Lewis, originating from an undergraduate final-year project at the University of the West of England. This method is a mathematical way to calculate the target score for the team batting second in a one-day cricket or Twenty-20 cricket match interrupted by weather or other circumstance

The D/L method has been criticized very badly that the price is on the wicket and not on the overs. You will be lucky guy if your team haven't lost a wicket batting second even though NRR (Net Run Rate) is poor. To me the game is flawed, we have seen some many where teams have lost half a dozen wickets with a heavy NRR still to chase winning the game.

Personally i wouldn't accept it for a sport where you need show your skill rather the technology or few people taking the game away from you. This is neither fair nor acceptable as part of the game. Here is one of the examples in sport where machines and technology dictate terms to humans. Still remember the days when i was wondering how could a team suddenly be in a situation to score 22 runs of 1 ball. SA then were assured of Victory against England but for the fact that 12 minutes of rain , damn for the rain gods and D/L cost the match for them. How could any team score 22 runs of 1 ball because of rain?

But that's how the rules are and that how the game is played and flawed with D/L. There has been several revisions of D/L method in the recent years to minimize the impact but the teams who have been on the receiving end because of D/L can only crib about the rules.

I can never take a big heart that India has won against England in the Kanpur ODI. Never ever will i consider this as a ODI victory, but that's how it is. The game was evenly poised and a couple of wickets would have done the trick for visiting team eagerly looking out for an outright win.

Matches where D/L has played spoilsport :-)
1. The match that strikes me when i talk about D/L was SA Vs ENG during 1992 Benson & Hedges WC in Australia where SA had to score 22 runs of 1 ball after shot showere of 12 minutes.
2. There was one similar situation during the 2003 WC in South Africa, i guess the match was played between SA and Kenya if my memory is right. Here it was altogether a different situation where in the SA team were just 1 run short of reaching the target computed by D/L method.
3. Another one that played against India .India batted first, and were all out in the 49th over for 328. Pakistan, batting second, were 7 wickets down for 311 when bad light stopped play after the 47th over. Considering the overall scoring rate throughout the match, this is a target most teams would be favored to achieve. And indeed, application of the D/L method resulted in a target score of 304 at the end of the 47th over, with the officially listed result as "Pakistan won by 7 runs (D/L Method)".

So am leaving all my readers with a sour taste that machines and technology can at times dominate humans and sport. The time is not far away where the we humans will become slaves to machines.