h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have a question about the numbers in your article:

[quote]
Scenario 1 - A premature ending to Team 2's innings
For the sake of this example, Team 1 scored 200 runs from their 50 overs, and then Team 2 reaches 146 for the loss of two wickets from their first 40 overs before rain stops play.
Team 1 - uninterrupted, 100% resources used.
Team 2 - lost 10 overs, 2 wickets down, lost 32.5% therefore used 67.5%.
Team 2's target is revised down to 69.2/100 of the original target (due to reduction in resources). The revised target is thus 135. As Team 2 has passed that target, they have won. Any score down to 136 would have been sufficient for victory, 135 would have been declared a tied game, and lower than 138 would have resulted in a defeat.
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Where does the 69.2 come from? Surely this should read 67.5/100?

[quote]
Scenario 2 - Interruption to Team 2's innings
For this example, imagine that due to bad weather the match has been reduced to 40 overs before its commencement. 40 overs, no wickets is 90.3% of resources, rather than the normal 100%. Team 1 get through their 40 overs, scoring 223. However, during Team 2's innings, there is rain after thirty overs, by which point they have scored 147 runs and lost five wickets. They lose five overs due to rain, and face the final five overs.
So, Team 1 got to use 89.3% of their resources. Team 2, by the thirty over mark, have ten overs left and five wickets down, hence they have 27.5% of their 89.3% remaining, and so have used 62.8%. However, the last five overs, with five wickets standing, only account for 17.8%, so they only get to use 80.6 %. To recalculate the target, the target will be 224 x (80.6/90.3). The target is therefore revised to 199.94, which rounds to 200 to win, 199 to tie, so they are left needing 53 runs from the last five overs for victory.
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Why is this sometimes 89.3 and sometime 90.3? Where does the 1% go? Is this something I have missed in the maths, or is it a typo?

I am confused, despite the rest of the comments saying this is easy...

I'm sure they are just typo's but there is one thing that I don't understand. In Scenario 3 it states that the revised target is 232 to win (correct based on the calculations). However, why can't the team batting second also win if they score 180 from their 30 overs, losing fewer than 5 wickets in the process? In fact they could theoretically be declared the winner with less than 180 runs if they lost sufficiently fewer wickets, as they would have used less of their allotted 'resources'. Very confusing to a bear of little brain !!

The reason why the target is revised upwards in this way allows for several related things:

1. The assumption the Team 1 had planned to pace their innings for the full 50 overs. Had they planned for a 30 over game it is safe to assume that they would have accelerated their scoring rate long before the 30th over and therefore would have ended up with a higher score.

2. You need to have a set target and not one that fluctuates on a ball by ball basis. If you base the target on the resources at that moment in time the target would change every over. You could cross the winning line by hitting a single only to see the target increase by 2 to allow for used resources.

3. Having a set target allows Team 2 to determine an appropriate batting line-up to deal with the revised target with 10 batsmen. It also prevents them from taking advantage too much and playing quick scoring batsmen higher up the order if the target was stil 180. This is fair as Team 1 never had the chance to do this as they did not know it was going to rain.

notsorotten

The article refers to the 2002 update of the D/L table, but actually shows the 2003 update table. In the worked examples it appears that somebody has 'mixed' the data from the 2 tables and as such, has added a little further confusion to the subject.

I have been working on a simple interactive calculator using the 2002 update. Unfortunately, it appears that increasingly higher scores in the international one-day game require occasional modifications to the resource percentages, rendering earlier 'updates' obsolete.

Statistically, this may aid consistency in the odi game, year on year, but this moving measure, combined with the well intentioned attempts by various internet commentators to explain how the D/L method works, causes confusion, particularly as the articles are not updated as the D/L tables are modified. As such, any internet search will show explanations of the D/L method based upon D/L tables from the 1990's to, as in the case of this article, 2002/03.