Rain saves India
Srinivas Bhogle
No, this is not a typographical error! There was a very real chance that India could have lost the fifth ODI in the Natwest tri-series against England at Durham on Thursday.
When the match ended with England on 53/1 after 12.3 overs, I heaved a sigh of relief.
Consider the circumstances: the England innings began in pretty gloomy conditions and everyone seemed pretty sure that there would be rain. England were chasing a very difficult target of 286, and the first few overs from Nehra and Zaheer Khan confirmed that the ball was doing something and big strokes were likely to be perilous.
So what does England do? They decide that the target of 286 is practically unattainable. They also realise that, with rain likely, the Duckworth/Lewis (D/L) method would come into play.
England therefore do something very clever. They decide that their best hope lies in exploiting a well-known anomaly of the D/L method which strongly favours the team batting second, especially till the 30th over or so, if the team holds on to its wickets (loses less than 2-3 wickets).
Of course, D/L comes into play only after 25 overs are completed. So the wise thing to do is to ensure that England is best placed at the 25-over mark. The next best thing to do is to ensure that no more than 30 overs are bowled (after 30 overs, D/L becomes "fair" again).
That's why it was a relief that the match didn't end. If it had gone on to about 25-30 overs, India were almost sure to lose unless England lost 2-3 more wickets; which was unlikely because Nasser Hussain and Knight are good enough not to get out if they play in a defensive mode.
|
|
Wickets lost
Overs |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
| 25 |
99 |
110 |
123 |
140 |
161 |
| 26 |
103 |
113 |
126 |
142 |
164 |
| -- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
| 30 |
124 |
132 |
141 |
154 |
171 |
| -- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
| 35 |
154 |
159 |
166 |
174 |
186 |
The table above tells the story even better. At the 25-over mark, England would have won if they had been any of 99/1 or 110/2 or 123/3 or 140/4 or 161/5. At 53/1 after 12,3 overs, they needed a mere 46 more in the next 12,3 overs if both Hussain and Knight stayed on. Or 57 more in 12,3 overs even after the loss of the second wicket!
At the 30-over mark, the winning scores were: 124/1 or 132/2 or 141/3 or 154/4 or 171/5 .. still rather easy, if England kept wickets intact.
By the 35-over mark, things are very fair: England's winning scores were 154/1 or 159/2 or 166/3 or 174/4 or 186/5.
There's a message here. The D/L method, like all methods, has a few "blind spots". It therefore makes a lot of sense to identify these blind spots and evolve a winning strategy to exploit these weaknesses. I cannot confirm if England indeed played to this plan. I rather think they did because they accelerated during overs 11 and 12 to get 7 and 9 runs respectively (while the field restrictions were still on) and ensure that they reached 53/1 which, at that point, was ahead of the D/L par score of 50.
Incidentally, the Jayadevan method would have required England to be at 119/1 or 123/2 or 127/3 or 148/4 or 172/5 when the 25 over mark was attained. This appears much fairer. We have said this on Rediff before: all things considered, the Jayadevan method is marginally better than the D/L method.
