Duckworth and Lewis are among the most famous pairings in cricketing history, despite the fact that Frank Duckworth (highest score 11 not out, at school) and Tony Lewis (“a fairly dour opening batsman” at school and village level: not to be mistaken for the former England captain of the same name) have never played professionally. Mathematicians by trade, now retired, the former from the nuclear power industry, the latter from academia, they created a formula by which targets are recalculated after a limited-overs match has suffered interruption. This jointly authored work describes their long collaboration and friendship, and their successful struggle to get their Duckworth–Lewis Method almost universally adopted at all levels of the one-day game.
Previous methods had thrown up some blatant injustices (notably when South Africa, in a World Cup semi-final match against England, saw an achievable target of 22 in thirteen balls altered, after a brief downpour, to an impossible 22 runs off one ball. They had essentially been penalized for bowling too well in the England innings). Duckworth and Lewis created a single formula which could weigh fairly the relative states of play at each interruption, balancing wickets left, overs remaining, and the strategic advantage for the team batting second in planning their innings. They reconciled law and justice (or “cricketing common sense”, as they put it) to a remarkable degree.
The mathematical element is pretty well explained, with useful and thorough appendices. The pair have had years of practice at mediating this complex matter to various bewildered cricketing authorities. Both, however, still feel irritated by commentators and journalists who refused to attend their seminars and yet take odd pride in their continued ignorance (the BBC’s Jonathan Agnew is most frequently cited as an offender).
Indeed, the book slowly becomes an unwittingly comical catalogue of rebuffs and ill-concealed resentments. Although two pop groups and one unsuccessful racehorse have been named after the Duckworth–Lewis Method, and the authors were appointed OBE, they found “fame without fortune”. The fees are one-offs; the freebies and invitations, recorded in often pointless detail, steadily decline. “Just after Tony’s retirement, we arranged to meet up with Rob Eastaway to make another attempt to persuade him to incorporate Tony’s method [in his player rankings]. We made an appointment to meet in a pub in Denmark Hill, but Rob forgot all about it and never appeared!”