Sport

Gavaskar slams ICC over Indian rule snub

12:02 pm on 4 June 2012

The batting legend Sunil Gavaskar has hit out at the International Cricket Council for retaining the Duckworth-Lewis rule for rain-affected games despite an alternative suggested by an Indian engineer.

The game's world governing body on Friday decided to stick with the rule devised by Englishmen Frank Duckworth and Tony Lewis, as it did not feel any improvements could be offered in the method put forward by V Jayadevan.

Gavaskar, writing in his column for the Times of India newspaper on Sunday, says the ICC should have at least given a trial to Jayadevan's system of calculating revised targets in limited-over matches.

Jayadevan, an engineer from the southern Indian state of Kerala, has spent a decade working on his so-called VJD system which has been used in Indian domestic matches since 2007 following a recommendation from Gavaskar himself.

The ICC's cricket committee, meeting in London, said it had considered Jayadevan's method in detail but found no evidence of any significant flaws in the D/L method, which was first introduced internationally in 1996.

In England, Jayadevan's challenge has been seen by some as another attempt by India, the game's superpower, to chip away at the influence of the former colonial power and inventor of the game.