DLS Calculator
The Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method resets a target when rain shortens a limited-overs match. It works on resource: every combination of overs remaining and wickets in hand is worth a percentage of a full innings, and a target is scaled by the resource each side actually had.
- Par score
- 187.5
- Formula applied
- S × R2 ÷ R1
Level at this point. A tie is the par score exactly.
Team 2 has less resource
Par = score × (R2 ÷ R1) when R2 is below R1, or score + G50 × (R2 − R1) ÷ 100 when R2 is above it. Target is one more than par.
This calculator does the arithmetic once you have the two resource percentages. It does not reproduce the resource table itself — that is the part the method keeps, and inventing numbers for it would produce confident, wrong targets. Read R1 and R2 from the official table and the formula below does the rest.
What resource means
A side starting a fifty-over innings with all ten wickets has 100% of its resource. Spend overs and it falls; lose wickets and it falls faster, because wickets and overs are worth more together than either is alone. Thirty overs left with nine wickets in hand is worth far more than thirty overs left with three.
That combination is the whole insight of the method, and it is why run rate alone was never adequate. The old average run rate rule rewarded a side for slogging in a shortened chase; DLS prices the wickets they would have had to risk.
The two formulas, and why there are two
When team 2 has less resource than team 1, the target scales down in proportion: the first innings score multiplied by R2 divided by R1. This is the ordinary rain-interrupted chase.
When team 2 has more resource — which happens when team 1's innings was the one cut short — the target cannot simply scale up, because a side that scored 250 in a curtailed innings would be credited with a rate they never had to sustain. Instead the extra resource is valued at G50, a standard reference score. The ICC uses 245 for a fifty-over match. So the target becomes the first innings score plus G50 multiplied by the resource difference.
Par score, target and the tie
The par score is the total that leaves the chasing side exactly level. The target to win is one run more. If play is abandoned with the chasing side above par they win, below par they lose, and exactly level is a tie.
This is why a captain in a rain-threatened chase watches the par score rather than the target: being one run above par when the umpires come off is a win, however many overs remain unbowled.
Standard Edition and Professional Edition
There are two versions. The Standard Edition uses a single published resource table and is designed to be worked by hand, which is what the formula on this page implements. It is still used at levels of the game without computer support.
International and major domestic matches use the Professional Edition, which runs as licensed software and adjusts for the scale of the first innings rather than using one fixed table. For a high-scoring first innings the two give materially different targets, and the Professional Edition is the official one. Treat anything calculated here as the Standard Edition answer.