Dr. A.J. Lewis MBE

25 February 1942 – 15 March 2020

Mathematician 

Dr Tony Lewis may be one of the unlikelier names to be associated with great developments in the game. Following the 1992 Men’s Cricket World Cup, Christopher Martin-Jenkins called for a better formula to calculate a winning team in a rain-affected one-day international, Frank Duckworth saw this and wrote the paper Fair Play in Foul Weather. Lewis read the paper and with applying to mathematics to the real world being a particular interest of his, reached out Duckworth and agreed to work together to devise a method. 

After going through several hundred scorecards to help perfect the formula, Duckworth and Lewis had a finished method, originally titled the Lancastrian Method, as both hailed from the county. The basic premise being that revisions to the target should take in wickets lost, overs bowled and predicted the score the batting team should score from the moment the innings was interrupted. They were invited to speak to Tim Lamb, cricket secretary of the TCCB and later Dave Richards, ICC Chief Executive and what was by then known as the Duckworth-Lewis Method was soon on trial. 

The first use of the method was New Year’s Day 1997 when England lost an ODI to Zimbabwe in Harare. Two years later, the method was formally adopted by the ICC and has been synonymous with cricket ever since. 

The pair continued to refine the method as matches were completed. In 2014 they retired and passed on the method to Australian mathematician Staven Stern. It is now known as the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method. 

He was awarded the MBE in 2010 for services to mathematics and cricket. The cricket themed band the Duckworth-Lewis Method was also named after the pair.