Obituary: Frank Duckworth, statistician

Although he stopped playing cricket after he left school, Frank Duckworth left an indelible mark on the game. A statistician who worked in the nuclear power industry, Duckworth was one of thousands of cricket fans dismayed by the farcical, rain-interrupted end to the 1992 Cricket World Cup semifinal, when post-precipitation calculations left South Africa needing to score 22 runs off one ball to beat England. At a Royal Statistical Society conference the following year, he presented a paper on a proposed new formula to calculate run targets in event of rain.

Fellow Lancastrian, mathematics lecturer Tony Lewis, suggested they analyse various one-day matches to assess its worth. That work became the "Duckworth-Lewis system" and is now part and parcel of the game. "A lot of people either claim they don't understand it or don't like it, but they know, deep down, it is the best way of working," he once said. Australian statistician Prof Steven Stern subsequently adapted the men’s work to include T20 cricket. Tony Lewis died in 2020; Frank Duckworth died on June 21, aged 84. — Agencies