Satire: A conversation between Duckworth and Lewis

Duckworth and Lewis- Men loved by the rain

Duckworth and Lewis are probably the only two people who have managed to trouble cricket teams world over by not even participating in a cricket match. It is like they have come to an agreement with the rain Gods and have made plans to spoil the chances of a team wanting to win a game very badly. Here is how a conversation between Duckworth and Lewis would look like.

1992, England vs South Africa WC Semi-final

Duckworth: What a ridiculous decision that was! This match could have and should have been easily won by the Proteas. I hope the team does not have to face this situation in the future and go on to win a cup or two quite easily without choking under pressure.

Lewis: I agree, but there has to be some way which would help teams to chase a target even after rain washes out few overs. Remember Christopher Martin-Jenkins on radio said that 'surely someone, somewhere could come up with something better’.

Duckworth: I would think since it is a mathematical problem, it would have a mathematical solution. So let’s just confuse everybody with major calculations and favour the team that is chasing since the idea of inception of this method came only after South Africa lost while batting second. There have to be enough terms and conditions to confuse everyone so that we don’t have to answer complicated questions.

Lewis: What about Test matches? They are the real identity of any cricketer. It needs a lot of patience and determination to bat out 90 overs in a day and take 20 wickets of the opposition in 5 days.

Duckworth: Think about the future too when the rules are being made. I am sure no one would be interested in watching boring Test matches and hence it would make no sense to spice them up. We do not want unnecessary drama in the monotonous form of this beautiful game. So, let us just focus on the ODIs.

1999 World Cup

Duckworth: Looks like this World Cup did not need the services of our flawless rule. Too bad there weren’t any rain-affected match in this tournament. We probably should discuss with the ICC if we could shift the tournament to a country where it rains 365 days a year. Otherwise, our rule would have no meaning at all.

Lewis: Yes, it looks as if there is no Duckworth-Lewis rule without rain. But wait, wasn’t that the aim of the rule in the first place?

2000

Duckworth: Many changes have occurred in the game and it is high time we tweaked our rule too. Let us add more confusion to the already confusing rule, but remember, the rule still has to favour the team which bats second.

Lewis: Let us lower the target comfortably for the chasing team even if they do not have those many reductions in overs. But just to show that we are not partial to the team chasing, we can increase the target by a random number if they lose early wickets.

2009

Duckworth: There are these strange things called powerplay introduced in cricket and what’s with the newest form of the game called T20? Who would have imagined there would be something like this 15 years back? How are we going to fulfil the conditions of our rule for these formats as well?

Lewis: The average scoring pattern of the T20s is similar to that of the ODIs. We have got this. The rule works for t20s too!

Duckworth: But just remember the chasing team benefits every time.

2014

Duckworth: I give up. A team is chasing 140 in 14 overs and there is another team which picks up 4 wickets in an over. When a team is tottering at 30-3 in 7 overs, they still manage to reach 200 by the end of the 20 overs. Nothing is impossible now after this shortest version has been invented. Our rule doesn’t make sense anymore. We should have just stuck to Tests.

Lewis: I told you. Test cricket is the purest form of cricket and it will never die, despite these inventions, no matter any number of rules and no matter the changes in the game.

This article is a work of fiction and should be taken in jest.