Calculate Duckworth-Lewis-Stern par score, revised target, and live ahead/behind status for T20, ODI, and IPL rain-affected matches.
Calculate if Team 2 is ahead or behind on DLS at this exact moment of the match.
The Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) method is the official ICC system used to calculate revised targets in rain-affected cricket matches. It was developed by statisticians Frank Duckworth and Tony Lewis in 1998, then updated by Professor Steven Stern to account for modern high-scoring patterns.
DLS treats every team's innings as having two resources:
A team starting an innings (50 overs, 10 wickets) has 100% resources. As overs are bowled or wickets fall, resources deplete. Critically, losing early wickets costs more than later wickets — a team at 100/1 in 15 overs has far more scoring potential than 100/6 in the same overs.
Before DLS, cricket used simple "Average Run Rate" or "Most Productive Overs" methods — both unfair because they ignored wickets. If a team had used up most of their wickets early, simply pro-rating their score upward set unrealistic targets. DLS solves this by accounting for both dimensions.
Below these limits, DLS gives statistically unreliable results, so the match is officially abandoned without a result.
Par score is the score Team 2 needs to tie the match if it ended at that exact moment. Revised target is one more than par score — the score needed to win. The two are often used interchangeably in commentary.
Losing a wicket reduces your remaining resources sharply (especially early). With fewer resources to use, your "share" of the target requirement increases proportionally. This is why teams batting second try to bat through without losing wickets when rain looms.
Rarely. Most edge cases are protected: minimum overs rules prevent very short matches, and the Professional Edition (used in internationals) caps adjustments for extreme scores. Most "controversial" DLS targets in famous matches were mathematically correct — they just felt unfair due to context.
G50 is the average score in an uninterrupted 50-over innings (currently ~245 for men's ODIs). It's used when Team 2 has more resources than Team 1 used — for example, if Team 1 was bowled out in 30 overs and Team 2 then gets the full 50 overs available. In this case, Team 2's target is Team 1's score + a G50-based bonus.
No. DLS is only for limited-overs cricket (ODI and T20). Test matches can be extended over multiple days, so rain delays don't require target adjustments — they just shorten the playing time.
The ICC publishes the Standard Edition resource table on its website. The Professional Edition table is proprietary and accessed only by licensed scoring software. Our calculator uses the publicly available Standard Edition.
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