Legacy of Duckworth: Revolutionizing Cricket with Rain-Adjusted Scores

Frank Duckworth, a pioneering statistician, co-created the Duckworth Lewis method, instrumental in revising cricket targets during rain-interrupted matches. Passed away at 84, his work was widely adopted in one-day internationals and T20 games. The method was later renamed Duckworth-Lewis-Stern in 2014 after modifications by Steven Stern.

Frank Duckworth, the pioneering statistician who co-created the Duckworth Lewis method adopted in cricket to revise targets in limited overs games truncated due to rain, died last week at the age of 84, the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) said on Tuesday. Duckworth and Tony Lewis created the famous method which was adopted by the International Cricket Council in 1999. It was widely used in one-day internationals and later in T20 matches.

"Fellows will be sad to learn that Frank Duckworth passed away on 21 June 2024, at the age of 84," the RSS said in a statement. "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 RSS explained how Duckworth presented a paper called "A fair result in foul weather" at its conference in 1992 where he proposed a formula for target correction in rain-interrupted matches. Duckworth then worked with Lewis, who was a mathematics lecturer at the University of the West of England, to come up with the formula. Lewis died in 2020 aged 78.

The Duckworth-Lewis method was later renamed the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) method in 2014 after Australian statistician Steven Stern made some modifications.

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