It’s a problem that has never had a solution accepted unequivocally by all. Especially now. When rain interrupts play in a one-day international, the side batting second inevitably feels it has got a raw deal under he prevailing Duckworth-Lewis formula. However, an alternative — conceived by V Jayadevan, a software expert from Kerala — could, if approved, be more acceptable.This method of setting targets is understood to have been favourably received by the Board for Control of Cricket in India, which has asked the International Cricket Council (ICC) to take a serious look at it.The Duckworth-Lewis formula — invented by Frank Duckworth, editor of the Royal Statistical Society’s magazine, and Tony Lewis, a mathematics lecturer — was first tried in 1997 and has decided the fate of around 200 matches. However, it has acquired a certain amount of notoriety because of the notion — misplaced or otherwise — that the target for the side batting second is unusually, unfairly high. It calculates targets according to the ‘exponential development’ of an innings, recognising two resources central to a batting side: overs and wickets. It infers that a combination of these two resources — overs still to play and wickets in hand — determines how many runs the team can hope to score. In a shortened innings, the resources of a batting side may be depleted more than they were at the start of their innings.This does not, however, take into account the natural progression of an innings; the high-scoring first 15 overs, the plateauing in between and a rise in the scoring rate at the end. Jayadevan’s solution uses what’s called the ‘natural development of an innings’ and incorporates these factors. Jayadevan, a cricket aficionado and an IIT Chennai-trained engineer now living in Thrissur, has had his theory published in the latest issue of the respected Indian journal Current Science. It quotes cricket experts — including Sunil Gavaskar — as calling it the Jayadevan method and even report Duckworth and Lewis as acknowledging it to be a superior method of determining cricketing targets. Another thumbs-up has come from Srinivas Bhogle, a scientist at the National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore and also brother of cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle. ‘‘Jayadevan’s method recognizes that a fair target must take into account information about overs remaining and wickets lost. But while Duckworth and Lewis responded to this requirement by building a sophisticated mathematical model, Jayadevan appears to be using a practical engineer’s approach’’, Bhogle says.There’s another difference between the two models. The source code of the D-L formula is encrypted, meaning the exact mathematical functions that are at its core are not available for scrutiny or independent validation. The Jayadevan model has a source code that can be accessed by anyone, so the whole approach is very transparent and verifiable. That, to draw an analogy, is the difference between Microsoft and Linux.Then again, when Sehwag is batting, you might as well throw this techie-talk out of the window and let nature take its course.(Additional reporting by Vikrant Gupta in Chandigarh)
