How maths has ruined one-day cricket

Last time we had a World Cup in Australia, there was a rain problem.

You might think rain is the natural enemy of the Test match. After all, a Test match is already in constant danger of grinding to a halt. A Test match is a middle-aged man with whiskers and a top hat who's just eaten a heavy meal and sat down in his favourite armchair to tell you the story of the time he met WG Grace on a paddle steamer going down the Limpopo during the Boer War. The story is gripping, his voice is mesmerising, but every time he gets to an interesting part, his eyelids droop and he begins to snore.

But Test match cricket goes perfectly with rain. Watching a Test match is like watching gardening. Sometimes when you're gardening, it rains. So what do you do? You go inside, have a cup of tea and peer at the sky every few minutes until it clears up. Even when a Test match ends on the third afternoon because the pitch is a lake and there are ducks nesting in the umpire's changing room, it's no big deal.

Fifty-over cricket, on the other hand, does not like rain. Fifty-over cricket is all about the occasion. It's like a wedding reception. You could postpone it, but who wants to come back the next day to finish a wedding reception? You have to rehire the suits, change the honeymoon flights, put the wedding cake in the fridge, it's a logistical nightmare.

So what do you do if it rains at a World Cup game?

Well, in 1992, the World Cup organisers said to themselves, "It's nearly the 21st century. Couldn't we employ some space-age mathematics to sort this out?"

But what with sending out the invitations and dealing with the caterers and designing the uniforms, they didn't have much time left, so what they came up with was Richie Benaud pressing the Random Number function on his calculator.

In the semi-final, South Africa went off for a rain delay needing 22 runs off 13. They had a cup of tea, a slice of cake, checked the weather forecast for the final, but when they returned, it turned out they needed 220 off 1. They didn't get them.

This did not go down well, mainly with the mathematical community. They didn't care that this method didn't work or that it made no sense. They were concerned from a professional point of view that it wasn't complicated enough. Maths is supposed to be hard. If ordinary non-maths people can understand it, well it makes them look bad.

So now we have the Duckworth Lewis method, which no one really likes, and everyone grumbles about, but because we don't really understand it, we don't want to go back to the mathematicians and complain about these algorithms they sold us, in case we end up looking stupid. Which is just how the mathematicians like it.

If you ask me, there's too much maths in cricket already. Maths is all over cricket like a parasitic algae. Look at the scorecard for a football match: you'll see the team names, the half-time scores and a note to explain who got sent off for gouging. But a cricket scorecard looks like a question from a linear algebra exam. There are probably people out there who think cricket is just an old-fashioned form of accounting.

I think we should cut back on the maths, and the Duckworth Lewis method should be the first thing to go. But what do we do if it rains? Simple. We toss a coin. Cricketers are good at tossing coins, they do it all the time. More importantly, everyone understands how a coin toss works, since we all use it. Pancakes or scrambled eggs? Cut the grass or shampoo the dog? Divorce or give it another twelve months? The coin-toss is unimpeachable. You can't argue with the coin toss.

If you must, make it the best of three. And if you want a bit of reality-television style drama, get a drum roll going when the coin is flung in the air and just as it hits the turf, have Ravi Shastri turn to the camera and say:

"Will South Africa be going home, or have they sneaked into the final? Tune in after these messages to find out."