Despite losing another ‘rain-rule battle’ with the International Cricket Council (ICC), V. Jayadevan, who has proposed a potential alternative to the Duckworth-Lewis rule with the VJD method, continues to be optimistic of achieving the world body’s recognition in the future.
Expressing “deep disappointment” at the ICC’s decision to stick with the D/L method, the Thrissur-based engineer questioned the rationale pointed out by the ICC in ruling out his VJD method.
“The ICC release mentioned that there are no significant flaws in the D/L method and my system doesn’t have any advantage over it.
However, the 20-page document I had sent across clearly dwells on these two aspects. I still reckon that if I had been invited to present my paper before the committee, most of the doubters could have changed their minds,” stated Jayadevan.
Though he knows that the issue is closed for the moment, he is hopeful after receiving an e-mail from ICC chief executive David Richardson on Friday wherein the South African says that he would give his “honest view” on the issue once he is back at the ICC headquarters in Dubai in two weeks’ time.
“I firmly believe that all is not lost yet. But what I need is more support from the BCCI, both financially and morally, to continue my research, which would be beneficial to the sport,” added Jayadevan, whose system is being used in the Indian domestic limited-overs circuit for a while now. Jayadevan believes that a periodic transition in the rain-rule is inevitable owing to the dynamic evolution of the limited-overs game with several rule changes including those related to Powerplay and the advent of T20 changing the scoring pattern a lot.
“The scoring pattern needs to be studied over a period of time. Both D/L and VJD methods are yet to look into the impact of Powerplay overs during a rain intervention,” opined Jayadevan.
The IIT alumni also termed it unfortunate reports by an England-based newspaper, portraying his system as “a symbolic example of India’s challenge to surpass England in every aspect of cricket’s world order”.