Tanay Sukumar, May 5, 2010

Frank Duckworth and Tony Lewis have admitted in an interview to a UK magazine that they never actually intended to provide proper results in cricket matches disrupted by rain.

The two British statisticians are known for the famous Duckworth-Lewis method (D/L Method), which is used to decide the result of rain-interrupted cricket matches. The two have confessed they have been fooling the cricketing world for the last two decades.

“The idea behind our method is simple,” Lewis said. “Those who know cricket don’t know maths. And those who know maths have nothing to do with cricket. We took advantage of this idea and had this comic thought of fooling the world by mixing maths with cricket.”

“Yeah, we are cheats but we don’t take responsibility of sending various teams out of World Cups due to rain,” Duckworth told the magazine. “We never actually intended to give fair results to cricket matches. We just wanted to be on the TV news channels every time a team lost because of our method.”