Duckworth-Lewis method in cricket

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Duckworth-Lewis method in cricket

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Unlike baseball, where the two teams alternate sets of at-bats, in cricket, one team does all the batting in the first half of the game, and then in the second half, the other team has to beat the first half’s score. But what if it starts raining during the second half, so the game has to end early, and there’s no way the second team will outscore the first team’s actual score?

The Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method is a way of setting a goal score for the portion of the game that was playable, and giving the second team the win if they beat the goal score at the time the game was ended. They don’t do it purely proportionally because that’s not actually fair (not every portion of time is equal; you can play harder if you know the time will be short, and you can take more risks depending on your guesses about when the game will end). Instead, it’s a statistical analysis of the resources available to the team and how well they used them.