LIVE AND LET DYSON

Mar 30, 2009 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

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“Frankly speaking I don’t understand Duckworth-Lewis. I just wait for the umpire’s decision.”

Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Indian Captain
When Gene Tunney knocked out Jack Dempsey to win the world heavyweight boxing championship in 1926, Dempsey explained his defeat to his wife with a rueful smile, “Honey, I forgot to duck.” On Monday, March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr shot US President Ronald Reagan. His lung was punctured yet Reagan insisted on walking into the emergency room. When his wife Nancy arrived, worried and scared, he looked up at her and said with a smile, “Honey, I forgot to duck.”

Given the circumstances, you have to ask yourself how much is a duck worth in such circumstances and whether forgetting to duck is as bad as being ignorant of the value of the duck or its worth.

John Dyson, the West Indies Cricket coach, who had four ducks in his Test Career as an Australian opening batsman, knows about ducks but seemed to be ignorant about the Duckworth-Lewis (D/L). This is a mathematical way to calculate the target score for the team batting second in a One-Day or 20/20 cricket match interrupted by bad light, poor weather or other circumstances such as a bee-attack (Bangalore 1981) or an invasion of locusts (something that happened in Australia). It was a case of crickets versus cricket.

In the case of Mr. Dyson it was neither cricket nor crickets. Andrew McGlashan, in an article entitled “Dyson blunder hands England shock win” wrote, “An amazing miscalculation from West Indies coach John Dyson handed England an extraordinary victory in the opening one-day international, at the Providence Stadium in Guyana, when he misread the Duckworth-Lewis chart and called his batsmen in when they were two behind the required target.”

Mike Holmans describing “England in Wonderland” said, “Unlike most of England’s rare victories, this one will be remembered for many years. Pub quizmasters will be reminding their punters for decades that for the first time in the history of ODI cricket, batsmen were ordered from the sidelines to accept the offer of light when they would be declared the losers – and when they had been ahead on Duckworth-Lewis until the previous ball.”

Patrick Kidd of The Times of London may not have been entirely kidding when he wondered whether “it was not all part of a cunning plan by Dyson”. According to Kidd (The Surfer on “cricinfo.com”), “By allowing England to win a game – and win it in farcical almost miraculous fashion – Dyson knows that the English media, which had been getting a bit down on their team, would start to ramp up their claims that now England are ready to win back the Ashes.

“Stuart Broad would be hailed as a new Botham, Andrew Strauss a new Brearley and Matt Prior a new, if less reliable, Bob Taylor. We’ll all get carried away, England will get their hopes up and Australia will be inspired to rub our noses in it.”

Another sports journalist, Richard Hobson, saw the blunder as enhancing the chances of Andy Flower, the former Zimbabwean batsman, to become England’s coach. Dyson was supposedly a contender but his forgetting to Duckworth may be used against him. Hobson said, “And now Dyson, another man linked to the post after his role in supervising West Indies to their success in the Test series. Duckworth/Lewis tables are not easy on the eye – those of a certain age before calculators will see comparisons with logarithm books – but to mistake victory for defeat by reading the wrong column of figures does not say much for his ability to work under pressure.”

Michael Jeh, in a “cricinfo.com” blog, asked about the role of the coach, “Is it to literally ‘coach’ the players in the skills of the game, is it to help with slips catching and fielding drills or is it as tactician/strategist/statistician? John Dyson’s confused actions in last night’s farce beg the question: Was it Dyson’s fault and what exactly is his role?”

He added, “Judging by Dyson’s miscalculations today, he is certainly no statistician or mathematician.”

Jeh, a former Oxford Blue, made the most important point of all, one that relates directly to the spirit of the game and the sportsmanship that has long characterised the West Indian approach to the game and for which we are justly famous, “If Dyson realised that his team was behind the run rate, you can bet he would have thought the light was still good. Perhaps it should be left purely to the umpires to make that decision. Left to coaches or players, it appears that the definition of bad light depends on where your team is in relation to D/L.

“That sort of cynicism has no place in this great game – either the light was good enough or bad enough but the definition should not rely on whether you’re ahead of the rate or not.”

This was a point emphasised by another Times journalist, Simon Wilde, who believed that Dyson should have apologised to the 15,000 spectators at the Providence ground. Wilde wrote, “As captain Chris Gayle conceded, had they known they were behind, West Indies would have batted on. The decision to accept an offer of bad light was pure opportunism. Win at all costs and damn the punters.

“Dyson: the man with a chart but no heart. Thanks, John, but if you’re interested in the England coaching job, we sincerely hope English cricket is not interested in you. Dyson’s chances were already slim. Now they are nil. His ingrained negativity is the last thing this England team need; they are naturally cautious enough.

“In his time as coach with Sri Lanka and West Indies, not to mention as a crabby opening bat for Australia, Dyson has shown himself oblivious to cricket as entertainment.”

Wilde pointed out the obvious pun that was making the rounds among the fans- “John Die Soon”. However, Chris Gayle is reported as saying, “Yes, it was a miscalculation. He [Dyson] was actually looking in the wrong column because the last wicket changed the equation. There’s no reason to point any finger. I’m not going to kill him.”

In the meantime Dyson has ducked out of his front and center seat in plain public view and can be only seen through a glass darkly. He is also strangely silent. It makes me wonder whether the duct tape the players used to cover up their sponsor’s logo has now found better use. Pity they did not do that to Ramnarine as well.

*Tony Deyal was last seen saying that maybe Dyson needs a new computer to help him understand Duckworth. Instead of a PC he should have a Quack-intosh.

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