Tony Lewis , one of the men behind Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method dies aged 78

News Bharati    03-Apr-2020 09:51:19 AM
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London, April 3: The England and Wales Cricket Board on Thursday announced that Tony Lewis, one of the men behind the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern system of calculating target scores in rain-affected limited-overs matches has died aged 78.
 
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The Duckworth–Lewis–Stern method (DLS) is a mathematical formulation designed to calculate the target score for the team batting second in a limited-overs cricket match interrupted by weather or other circumstances.
 
 
Both Tony and his fellow mate Frank Duckworth had developed the original Duckworth-Lewis method. It was first introduced in 1997 and officially adopted by the International Cricket Council in 1999. The system was renamed as Duckworth-Lewis-Stern Method in 2014 after Steven Stern became the custodian of the method following the retirements of Duckworth and Lewis.
 
The making of the method goes back to 1980s. In the 1980s, Frank Duckworth had proposed complicated rule calculations. After the 1992 Cricket World Cup, commentator Christopher Martin-Jenkins asked for a better calculation system. Lewis read Duckworth's 1992 paper Fair Play in Foul Weather and together they devised the Duckworth-Lewis Method.
 
Geoff Allardice, ICC General Manager said, "Tony’s contribution to cricket is huge. The present-day system of resetting targets in international cricket is based on the one developed by him and Frank more than two decades ago. His contribution to the game of cricket will be remembered for years to come and we send our condolences to his family and friends."
 
Lewis, a graduate in mathematics and statistics from Sheffield University, retired as a lecturer of Quantitative Research Methods from Oxford Brookes University. He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2010.
 
It is an attempt to set a statistically fair target for the second team's innings, which is the same difficulty as the original target. The basic principle is that each team in a limited-overs match has two resources available with which to score runs (overs to play and wickets remaining), and the target is adjusted proportionally to the change in the combination of these two resources.