The Reverse Sweep

Duckworth vs Collingwood

"Tonight, live from Providence, Guyana, the ICC brings you a cruiserweight contest over ten rounds for the ICC Championship of the World.

In the blue corner, we have the reigning champion Paul "The Durham Battler" Collingwood, the man who has saved England's bacon countless times over his career. Remember Cardiff, Centurion and Cape Town? Well, it was Colly's grit and determination that saved those matches for England. Colly is a real Dog of War, as well as England's undisputed champion in one day cricket and captain of the T20 team.

In the red corner, we have the challenger Frank "no, I'm not Vera and Jack's son" Duckworth, joint architect of the much maligned Duckworth Lewis Method, which is used to define targets in rain affected limited overs and T20 cricket matches.

The contest has been arranged following England's rain affected match against West Indies here at Providence on Monday, when the rain came after England had amassed 191 off their 20 overs. The DL Method calculated that West Indies only needed to score 60 off 6 overs in order to win the match, which they duly managed.

Understandably, Colly was a bit peeved by this, especially as England had crashed out of the last World T20 in similar fashion against the same opposition. "There's a major problem with Duckworth-Lewis in this form of the game. I've got no problem with it in one-dayers ... but it's certainly got to be revised in this form. Ninety-five percent of the time when you get 191 runs on the board you are going to win the game. Unfortunately Duckworth-Lewis seems to have other ideas and brings the equation completely the other way and makes it very difficult."

But undaunted by facing the Durham Battler and the 5lb bat he wields, Duckworth got his riposte in during the weigh-in "There have been a total of about 70 matches decided by Duckworth-Lewis since Twenty20 was invented in 2002, and there's only been two instances where any dissent has been expressed, and both of those were by Paul Collingwood and the England team, as a result of failing to win against West Indies."

Colly's ire would have been compounded, if the DL Method had handed Ireland victory yesterday and prompted England's premature exit from a competition, some observers (we cannot think who they were) had tipped them to win.

So the mud has been slung, the gloves are on, the Rovers Return is packed and Vera and Jack are hiding behind the bar. Let the action begin. Seconds out, Round One...

Daniel 'Perseus' Vettori fails in impossible quest

As the weekend was spent travelling, I've only now caught up with the outcome of the second ODI between Australia and New Zealand at Auckland.

I'm still trying to fathom how Duckworth Lewis calculations meant that New Zealand had to chase 266 runs from 45 overs and had two of their powerplay overs deducted. Given that Australia had scored 273/7 from 50 overs, it seems unfair to say the least that the Black Caps only had their target reduced by eight runs but had to do it from five less overs, two of those powerplays.

At first I thought John Howard's influence as the next President of the ICC was already taking effect; anyone who saw his sour face on handing the Webb Ellis Trophy to Martin Johnson in 2003 will understand what I mean by that.

But no, it seems Duckworth Lewis is akin to Greek Mythology and that the team batting second will be given an impossible quest in order to prevent ignominious defeat and a painful death.

On Saturday, Duckworth Lewis decided to see if Daniel Vettori could emulate Perseus. To save his beloved New Zealand from certain death, he had to combat the Three Gorgons and cut off the head of Medusa without looking directly at her as that would involve turning to stone, death and defeat. Then with the overs running out he had to save the Kiwis from the dastardly Australian Kraken by making Mitchell Johnson stare at the face of the head of Medusa, thus turning him to stone.

To Vettori's credit he managed to defeat the Gorgons and obtain the head of Medusa and only failed because as Johnson's mother is even more fearsome than Medusa, he is the only mortal that can look in the face of Medusa and live.

If only Vettori had used the head of Scott Styris...