England set a target of 191 for the Windies and on most days (read - when there is no Micheal Hussey in the opposition), that should have been enough. On that fateful day, it wasn't. After 2.2 overs, the Rain Gods entered the picture, a possible consequence of that clergyman in the audience chanting some mystic mantra. WestIndies had 30 runs on the board without losing any wickets but only a 46% chance of winning the match. Till that point, the match was close, tense, interesting and what not!
The rain did not play a total spoilsport. It stopped, and the stadium erupted in joy, not just because the match was going to resume, but also because the Windies were set a modest revised target of 60 (D/L), handing the match to them on a platter. Did you know that their chances increased by 15% directly without a ball being played because of that revision? That was plain robbing England of a victory and saying 'Messrs. Duckworth and Lewis feel you should lose'.
So, who has the answer to this injustice? What is that solution that the Cricket world seeks?
Ta da! The answer is COW!
But how can the Chance of winning program be used here, you ask?
Quite simple, actually. The revised target should be one that maintains the COW program at the same percentage (here, WI - 46%) for the revised number of overs. In the Eng-WI case, to maintain the same percentage chance of winning for the teams, the revised target for 6 overs should have been 76 runs. That would have left WI needing 46 runs to win from the next 22 balls with 10 wickets in hand. I think that was fair, competitive and retained the spirit of a contest.
COW works as a replacement to the Duckworth-Lewis method for T20Is.
Now, run and let the ICC know about this. Thank you.
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For more on the path breaking, trend setting tool that is COW, click here.
For more on Aswin, click here.