Rain rules for limited overs cricket and probabilities of victory

Abstract

Summary. The paper discusses the properties of a rule for adjusting scores in limited overs cricket matches to preserve probabilities of victory across interruptions by rain. Such a rule is argued to be attractive on grounds of fairness, intelligibility and tactical neutrality. A comparison with other rules also offers a useful way of assessing the way in which the application of such rules will affect the fortunes of teams in rain-affected games. Simulations based on an estimated parameterization of hazards of dismissal and on numerical dynamic programming methods are used to compare a probability preserving rule with the now widely used Duckworth-Lewis method.