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Lancs beaten by the system
From the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, first published Thursday 27th Aug 1998.
LANCASHIRE could be about to miss out on an historic treble - through no fault of their own.
Dav Whatmore's men are hot favourites to beat Derbyshire in the NatWest Trophy next week.
And should Lancashire beat the rain and their remaining championship opponents, there is a strong chance their first championship since 1950 would be in the bag.
But the final leg of the treble might already have eluded Lancashire by that stage.
For, even if Lancashire win their remaining two AXA 40 overs fixtures, Essex might pip them at the post.
All that county has to do is win their own remaining three games to clinch the title on faster run rate.
And that is a ridiculous state of affairs.
For Essex play their cricket on a glorified garden lawn.
You can collect six leg byes off your thigh pad at Essex from the bowling of a spinner.
Bowlers start their run-ups from inside the ice cream vans outside the ground. Remember where Graham Lloyd broke his Lancashire record with that innings of 226 which included 12 sixes? Essex.
So it is not all that surprising that, during the course of a 17-game season that Essex should be able to maintain a vastly superior run rate.
Even if the two sides had played on grounds of comparable size, the dice are loaded in the favour of the southern softies.
For, it might have escaped the attention of those dodderers at Lord's, but it's fairly wet up north.
And, for their information, this alters the state of wickets, making it harder to score runs.
I have devised a far more even-handed system - the Duckworth-Lewis-Bramwell method.
The aggregate run rate should first be expressed as a percentage of the county's average rainfall. Multiply this by the number of games your captain and overseas star has missed with a sore toe.
Add to this the number of key Test stars rested on any particular day for no particular reason.
Then subtract the number you first thought of.
There is, I suppose, an alternative.
And that is to adopt the system used in the Benson and Hedges zonal matches.
That competition employs the ludicrously simple aggregate run rate method.
This takes into account how a side prevents the other side from scoring.
Blindingly simple, even for the blinkered buffoons at the English Cricket Board.
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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