DLS Method in Cricket Explained: How Rain Targets Are Set

Few things cause more arguments at an Asia Cup or IPL watch party than a rain-revised target flashing on screen. The chasing team suddenly needs a number that seems too high, or the game is handed to a side that looked behind. The Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method is the reason, and once you understand what it is measuring, the “unfair” numbers start to make sense.

The core idea: resources, not just overs

A batting side has two things to spend: overs to face and wickets to lose. DLS bundles these into a single figure called “resources,” expressed as a percentage. A full 50-over innings with all ten wickets is 100% of resources.

Lose overs to rain, or lose wickets, and your remaining resource drops. DLS uses a reference table (and, at the top level, a computer model) to say exactly how much resource remains for any combination of overs left and wickets down.

Why wickets matter so much

This is the part people miss. A team chasing 180 in 20 overs with all ten wickets in hand is in a far stronger position than one chasing the same total with three wickets left. DLS knows this. It credits wickets in hand generously, because they let a team attack.

That is why a rain-cut target often looks steep. If a chasing team barely lost any wickets before the rain, DLS assumes they can still score fast, so it raises the bar accordingly.

A simple worked example

Say Team A bats first and posts 200 in a full 20-over T20. Rain then cuts Team B’s chase to 10 overs. A naive fan would halve the target to 100. DLS does not, because Team B still has all ten wickets for those 10 overs, which is a lot of resource per over.

Team	Overs	Wickets in hand	Resource used
Team A (full innings)	20	10	100%
Team B (rain-shortened)	10	10	roughly 63%

DLS scales Team A’s 200 by the resource ratio and adds a run, so Team B’s revised target might be around 127 rather than 100. Fewer overs, but plenty of wickets, so the ask stays high.

When it applies and when it doesn’t

DLS only kicks in for limited-overs cricket, so Test formats are untouched. A minimum number of overs must be bowled to each side for a valid result, typically five per side in a T20I and twenty in a 50-over game. Below that threshold, the match is declared a no-result.

The system has been refined over the years, most notably Steven Stern’s update for the higher totals of modern T20 cricket. It is not perfect, and captains still grumble about specific cases, but it remains the fairest widely accepted way to settle a match the weather refused to let finish. If you want to understand how umpires handle stoppages once play resumes, our guide to the dead ball rule covers what does and does not count.