England's jinx

England’s performances in international competitions are usually pretty poor, bordering on very poor. They have managed to squeeze into the Super Eights after a loss to West Indies and wash-out against Ireland. However that belies a bit on injustice. England made 191 against the West Indies and the West Indies managed to win in six overs with 60. That is not much more than the average asking rate and they had more than a third of that innings with fielding restrictions.

The Duckworth-Lewis method of determining target scores is all about resources. Remaining overs and wickets are resources. When West Indies came back out (after 2.2 overs) they were set 60 after 6 overs. That is because the calculation took the overs remaining (3.4) and wickets (10) into account to come up with 60. However, most people can see than 60 in 6 overs is a lot easier to score than 191 in 20. The D/L method is a good system but I think it may need some tweaking for T20. One such tweak would be to reduce the number of wickets available in the calculation if there are only a small number of overs to play. For example if there are less than eight overs to play, reduce the number of wickets to five in the calculation. This would push up the par score and give the side batting second more of a chance. In the end all we want to see is a fair matchup.