Saturday, February 28, 2015 saw arguably the best World Cup classic in recent memory. The two co-favourites and co-hosts, Australia and New Zealand met in a Group A clash that New Zealand, on the face of it pwned. Cleaning up a 50-over chase of 151 at 6.56 RPO with 161 balls unused, is a stroll in the park you’d think? Not if you watched that game! New Zealand was one well-directed-yorker-to-the-number-11 away from the most dramatic defeat in the history of dramatic defeats! At 22.4 overs, chasing 151, New Zealand were 146 for 9, before Trent Boult survived two balls to hand it over to Williamson, whose straight six then saved NZ the blushes. Okay, so that’s one close call, after three hammerings handed out to the opposition, you’d think?
Not if you go by the Net Run Rate system in use for this tournament, (and of course, for ages, now!). New Zealand’s NRR before that game was 3.586, and after the narrow one-wicket scamper, increased, marginally to 3.589! In simple layman terms, the NRR increase implies that New Zealand’s commanding one-wicket shellacking of Australia was a victory that matches, or was marginally better than the ones handed out to Sri Lanka, or England. How does that sound?! Not what you’d want as a tie-breaker, would you, in a league where teams might very well end up on equal points and NRR decisions for quarterfinal placings! (and by extension a tie breaker for a tied or abandoned quarter-final or semi-final!)
The main flaw is in its simplistic ignorance of the same parameter that dogged revised targets in initial days – wickets in hand, as a more complete measure of the closeness of a contest. Conceived in the initial days of ODI cricket, like the run rate rule, the NRR simply deducted the average bowling run-rate from the average batting run rate. And for teams bowled out, the full allocation of overs is used in the calculation. For example, if Starc HAD managed to get one of those two balls bang on target, their NRR would have gone down from 3.58 to 2.20, as New Zealand would have been deemed to have scored 146 in 50 overs as they were bowled out. New Zealand would still be where they are (3.589) if they had quietly sleepwalked to a 10-wicket win in the same 23.1 overs, instead of losing 9 wickets and running it so close. This is because the only thing that counts towards NRR in a successful chase is the number of balls remaining at completion, and not the wickets.
Another problem is that revised-overs games see abnormal rates of scoring that, while appropriate for that particular contest and its playing conditions, distorts the NRR significantly, and may sometimes pose unfair advantages or disadvantages to other teams in the league. 120 playing 120 in a 20-over a side reduced game, 180 playing 180 in a 20 over game, and 300 playing 300 in a 50 over game all contribute differently to the NRR though by themselves they may be equally close contests. Surely that is a needless extraneous constraint on other teams.
That, by the way also exposes a flaw in the bonus points system! Chasing a target within 40 overs gets a bonus point, in many competitions currently in vogue (most notably the Aussie tri-series). While there were calls for this to be introduced at the World Cup, one can only imagine the indignation that would have ensued from New Zealand getting a “bonus point” for the “comprehensive” victory over Australia, having got there 17 overs ahead of the bonus point cut-off, when in reality they were inches away from defeat!
The answer lies, in factoring in the wickets too into the equation as a measure of closeness. The ready solution for this, is in using the Duckworth-Lewis resource percentages for successful chases. When the Duckworth-Lewis system is demonstrably worthy enough to judge the performance of teams in interrupted games, why not extend it as a measure of a team’s victory margin, in effect quantifying their performance in uninterrupted games too? The Duckworth-Lewis resource percentages can be used to determine how big the disparity is. For this, there could be 100 points put up for grabs, and this is proportionately allocated based on the decisiveness of the victory. This is demonstrated in the following cases:
- 1st innings score successfully defended in uninterrupted game:
Team 1: 275/5 in 50 overs, Team 2: 225 all out.
The simplest case: Just allocate 100 points proportionately according to the team scores: Team 1 receives 55 and Team 2 receives 45 points
- Team 1’s score successfully defended after D/L target revision:
Team 1: 300 in 50 overs, mid innings break sees match reduced to 20 overs. Team 2 chasing 163 end up at 110 for 8 in 20 overs
Here, the score for Team 1 is taken as in the D/L system to be the final Innings Target to tie after all interruptions and revisions, and this is used to calculate the points. Team 1 would get (162/272 =) 59.55 points and Team 2, 40.44, commensurate to their scores. Interruptions in Team 1’s innings are immaterial, as only the finally revised Innings Target for Team 2 using D/L, and Team 2’s final score are used.
- Successful chase in uninterrupted game:
Team 1: 270 in 50 overs, Team 2: 271/6 in 45 overs
By the D/L system, the par score at the point of victory was 230, whereupon Team 2 reached 271. As with every incomplete second innings, Team 1’s score is taken to be 230 (45.908 points) and Team 2’s, 271 (54.09 points).
By this scale, New Zealand in that game mentioned above reached the victory target of 152 in 23.1 overs losing 9 wickets, i.e. at a point where the D/L par score was 146. Australia would receive points proportionate to this score of 146 (= 48.993) and New Zealand, for their 152 (=51.006), far more reflective of how close the contest was
- Successful chase of reset target.
Team 1: 300 in 50 overs, Team 2: 163 for 4 in 18 overs (Target to win: 163 in 20 overs after mid innings stoppage)
The Par Score they needed to be (= the D/L score to tie) at the point of Team 2’s victory is taken to be Team 1’s score (140), against Team 2’s successful chase of 163. Team 1 gets 46.2 points and Team 2, 53.8 points.
- D/L decision after premature termination
Team 1: 300 in 50 overs, Team 220 for 6 in 43 overs
As always, the D/L par score at the point of termination is taken to be Team 1’s score (249). Team 2’s score is then compared to it, and points are thus awarded. Points are split corresponding to Team 1’s par score of 249 (53.1) and Team 2’s final score of 220 (46.9 points).
The same procedure is applied, if Team 2 happens to be ahead of the D/L Par at a premature termination, say they were at 265 for 6 in that last example instead of 220. They would get 51.55 points against 48.45 for Team 1. This is also independent of earlier stoppages, as only the terminal position of the game is needed to be known in the case of a premature termination.
- Tied or abandoned games
Tied matches or abandoned matches do not carry a definite result, and therefore 100 points can be split 50-50. The scores in the Super Over, wherever used as a tie-breaker for tied games, are not official and are used for the sole purpose of a binary decision on a winner.
Thus a fair system that uses the aggregate of relative performance of a team in each game can be used. The advantage is that, it considers equal weightage for each game (the relative superiority of the winner is taken in each game, irrespective of the length of the game). This ensures that teams are not unfairly impacted by the length of the match. And if organisers want to introduce bonus points, they could do that for victories by more than 20 points (i.e an extra point for chalking up 60 or more points while winning) This is demonstrably a far fairer method than the NRR in use, and the sooner the ICC gets this going in limited over matches, the better, before some calamitous NRR calculation seats itself alongside the Sydney World Cup semi-final of 1992!
