The best scene in the Delhi vs Kolkata match the other day was Saurav Ganguly looking towards the sky, seeing his hopes of getting into the semi-finals getting dashed. It was pretty tragic for the KnightRiders, whose larger-than-life captain and owner have dominated the IPL, to get washed away by the rain. Cricket is not a game that can co-exist with any sort of rain. Rain not only washed out the games, but the infamous Duckworth-Lewis rule has come to bite several teams over its short history. I’ve tried several times to understand just how the hell that works, but the complexity of the thing is so baffling. It is an impenetrable formula, whose working I think no one understands, and for all you know, its outcome is determined by a monkey tossing a coin, because that’s what it seems like when matches are decided on the Duckworth-Lewis.
"Its outcome is determined by a monkey tossing a coin,
because that’s what it seems like when matches
are decided on the Duckworth-Lewis"
And things are only going to start getting worse, as the monsoon season sets on in South India. Its going to be a horrible tragedy if any of Chennai’s matches get washed, and worse still if the rain arrives during the semi-finals or the finals. The Duckworth-Lewis rule doesn’t make any sense during ODIs, and applying it to 20 over games is just asking for disaster.
Don’t get me wrong, there is no acceptable solution for a rain-interrupted match. The solution, of course, is to not play during the rain. We’ve talked about it before, the IPL, which does not have any reserve days, should not be scheduled during May-June. Jan-Feb is the ideal time for cricket, and the BCCI should look at playing it during that season next year.
