LONDON: At the age of 84, Frank Duckworth, a member of the team that invented the Duckworth-Lewis system for determining target scores in limited-overs cricket that was affected by inclement weather, passed away.
Duckworth created the method that was formally accepted by the International Cricket Council (ICC) in 1999, along with fellow statistician Tony Lewis.
“Frank will be remembered largely for his contributions to the Society as editor of RSS News, and to cricket as the co-inventor of the Duckworth-Lewis method,” the London-based Royal Statistical Society (RSS) said in a statement.
‘A fair result in inclement weather’ was the title of a brief presentation that Duckworth introduced at an RSS meeting in 1992.
The absurd conclusion of the 1992 World Cup semi-final between South Africa and England in Australia, during which a brief downpour caused havoc with calculations and left South Africa aiming for an impossibly high 22 runs off a ball, served as the direct inspiration for the article.
Lewis and Duckworth got in touch after Duckworth’s talk, and the two collaborated on a formula that England utilized for the first time against Zimbabwe in a one-day series in 1999.
After being somewhat altered by Australian statistician Steven Stern, the method was dubbed the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method after Duckworth and Lewis retired.
