Duckworth-Lewis-Stern
also: DLS · D/L · Duckworth-Lewis
A method for setting a fair revised target when rain or bad light shortens a limited-overs match.
DLS treats a team's batting as a resource made of overs left and wickets in hand. When play is lost, each side's remaining resource is compared and the target is scaled to match, so a side that has lost few wickets is not penalised the same as one that was five down. It was devised by Frank Duckworth and Tony Lewis and has been maintained by Steven Stern since 2014.
A match decided this way carries the method on its record. That matters for analysis: the winning margin, the target and the overs bowled in such a match come from a formula, not from the two sides playing the same number of overs, and a model that treats them as ordinary results will be misled.
Working out a revised target by scaling the run rate. DLS is not pro rata: wickets in hand change the target as much as overs lost does.
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