Rain Rules
What happens to a cricket match when the heavens open, and whether the maths that decides it is fair.
Limited-overs cricket needs a result, and rain doesn’t care. Since the 1980s the game has tried one formula after another to decide what a chasing side “should” have scored when play stops: run rates, most productive overs, and finally the resource tables of Frank Duckworth and Tony Lewis.
This series starts with the evidence: every rain-hit match on record, and a replay of thousands of rain-free chases under each rule to see which ones tilt the game toward the chasing side.
In this series
- 1Rain Stopped PlayEvery rain-hit match in the Cricsheet archive, filterable by format, country and year.
- 2Who Wins When It RainsRain-free chases replayed under six rain rules, to see which ones favour the chasing side.
- 3Someone, SomewhereHow a farce in Sydney, a remark on the radio and two English statisticians gave cricket a rain rule it could live with.
- 4The D/L CalculatorWork out a revised target and par sheet with the Duckworth–Lewis Standard Edition, the version anyone can do by hand.
- 5Beat the ParSix real chases, six sudden downpours. Guess the Duckworth–Lewis par score and see how your over goes.
- 6The Wrong NumberDurban, 2003. South Africa hit the six they thought they needed, blocked the next ball, and walked off into the rain and out of their own World Cup.