Against the Spin

Pakistan grabbed the World Cup and the headlines in the final on Sunday.  But Sri Lanka fought remarkably well, first to post 138 after losing 4 wickets in the first 6 overs, and then to defend it remarkably well for the first 17 overs of the chase.  In the end, Pakistan won by 8 wickets with plenty of balls to spare, but the match was much closer than that.

To get a better idea of how close the match was at various points in the chase, I came up with a measure (based on the Duckworth-Lewis system) of the batting team’s “momentum” during the 2nd innings of a chase.  To be precise, I used the ratio of the proportion of the target remaining, to the proportion of resources remaining.  This plot shows which team had the momentum during the 2nd innings of the ICC World Twenty20 Final. Pakistan are the batting team, and Sri Lanka are the bowling team. Scores over 100 indicate the bowling team has the advantage under the standard Duckworth-Lewis system, while the batting team has the advantage under 100. The distance from 100 indicates the size of the advantage.  Two balls before Afridi hit that six off Udana’s bowling, Sri Lanka were actually ahead on Duckworth-Lewis!  (Note: this is the standard edition of the D-L system, used in international matches until 2003; the Professional edition of the D-L formula is currently used, and that isn’t available to the public.)