Player Ranking: A Solution to the Duckworth/ Lewis Method Problems

Abstract

Delay in a cricket match due to rain interruption or bad light is the most hated in the cricket arena in limited overs game (50 overs or 20 overs games). A complete washout of the match is an unsolvable phenomenon but the problem of restarting the match to be played with reduced number of overs has to be solved. Several different scenarios are faced in this context for which the Duckworth Lewis (D/L) or the new version Duckworth Lewis Stern (DLS) method is used to solve the problem of resetting the targets for the chasing team (team batting second). The D/L method uses two factors; the remaining number of overs and wickets, which yields to certain problems. There is not much that can be done with the number of overs remaining but the number of wickets remaining can be handled much more efficiently to reset the scores. In this article we are presenting a simple yet useful method that not only take into account the number of remaining wickets (batsmen) but also their quality (in terms of their career rating points and their ranking). Experiments are performed with the proposed method which shows the acceptability of our proposed solution.