DLS Method Explained: How Rain Targets Work in Cricket

You are at Emirates Old Trafford, the covers have been on for fifty minutes, and the screen has just flashed up a new number. This page is the Duckworth Lewis Stern method explained cricket-fan-first: not the theory of the model, but the arithmetic worked through with real figures, and a practical guide to which number on the scoreboard actually decides the match while you are sitting in the ground with a wet programme.

If you want the conceptual account — what resources are, why run rate fails, why the method is stingier towards a chasing side than people expect — that is set out in full in our companion explainer on how the DLS method works. What follows here assumes you already accept the idea that a batting side spends two things, overs and wickets, and goes straight to the sums and the scoreboard.

The two numbers that matter, and where to find them

At any rain-affected match in England there are only ever two figures worth watching, and English grounds display them in different places.

The revised target is a fixed number once the interruption is over. It is the total the side batting second must reach to win, over a stated number of overs. It goes up on the main scoreboard, on the big screen, and it is read out over the tannoy — at Lord's you will hear it before you see it, because the manual board takes a while to catch up.

The par score is a moving number, updated ball by ball, and it exists for one purpose: if the game is abandoned right now, the side ahead of par wins. Level with par is a tie. Behind par and you lose. Broadcasters show it in the corner of the screen; grounds without a modern board often do not show it at all, which is why so many people in the Radcliffe Road Stand at Trent Bridge are refreshing a scores app rather than looking at the pavilion.

The distinction catches out newcomers constantly. The target tells you what a full chase requires. Par tells you whether you are winning at this exact instant. They are different numbers derived from the same table, and they very rarely agree.

Worked example one: rain before the chase begins

The cleanest case, and the easiest to follow.

A fifty-over match. Team 1 bats its full allocation without interruption and makes 262 all out. Because nothing was taken away, Team 1 used one hundred per cent of the available resources.

Rain then falls during the interval. When play resumes, the chase has been cut to 30 overs, and Team 2 walks out knowing that from the first ball. The published standard-edition resource table gives a side with thirty overs remaining and all ten wickets in hand roughly 75.1 per cent of a full innings' resources.

The sum is a straight proportion:

262 × 0.751 = 196.8, rounded down to 196, plus one run to win

Team 2's revised target is 197 from 30 overs.

Now look at what that actually means. Team 2 has lost forty per cent of its overs but only twenty-five per cent of its target. The required rate has jumped from 5.24 an over to 6.57. That is not the system being harsh; it is the system charging Team 2 for the advantage of knowing the innings is thirty overs long before a ball is bowled, which lets it bat aggressively from the start with every wicket intact.

	Team 1	Team 2
Overs	50	30
Resources	100%	75.1%
Score / target	262	197 to win
Rate required	5.24	6.57

Worked example two: rain in the middle of the chase

This is the version you are most likely to sit through at a county ground in July.

Same first innings: Team 1 makes 262, R1 is 100 per cent. Team 2 begins a normal fifty-over chase and reaches 120 for 3 after 25 overs. The covers come on. When play restarts, Team 2 has 10 overs left rather than twenty-five.

Team 2 did not lose all its resources — it lost the difference between what it had at the stoppage and what it has on resumption.

• At the interruption: 25 overs left, 3 wickets down ≈ 56.0 per cent remaining
• On resumption: 10 overs left, 3 wickets down ≈ 29.8 per cent remaining
• Resources lost to the rain: 56.0 − 29.8 = 26.2 per cent
• Team 2's total resources: 100 − 26.2 = 73.8 per cent

The target is Team 1's score scaled by that figure:

262 × 0.738 = 193.4, rounded down to 193, plus one

Team 2 needs 194, and it already has 120. So the equation on the board becomes 74 runs from 10 overs with seven wickets standing.

Notice what the three wickets already lost have done. Had Team 2 been 120 for 1 at the same point, its resource loss would have been slightly larger — a side with more wickets in hand loses more by having overs removed — and the revised target would have come down by a little more. Wickets are not just a measure of how much trouble you are in; they are half of the arithmetic.

Worked example three: when the target is bigger than the score

This is the outcome that produces the most complaints at English grounds, and it is entirely correct.

Team 1 is batting and reaches 220 for 4 after 40 overs when the rain arrives and does not stop. Its innings is over. The match is then reduced so that Team 2 gets 40 overs, and it knows that before it starts.

Team 1 did not use a full innings' worth of resources: it never got its last ten overs. With ten overs remaining and four wickets down it still had about 28.3 per cent in hand, so R1 = 100 − 28.3 = 71.7 per cent.

Team 2, starting a clean forty-over innings with ten wickets, has R2 = 89.3 per cent.

R2 is larger than R1, and here the method changes gear. You cannot simply multiply 220 by 89.3/71.7, because that would assume Team 1 would have gone on scoring at the same rate through overs it never received, and innings do not work like that. Instead the surplus resource is converted into runs using an average-total constant — in the standard edition, currently 245 for men's fifty-over cricket.

220 + 245 × (89.3 − 71.7) ÷ 100 = 220 + 43.1 = 263.1, rounded down to 263, plus one

Team 2 is asked for 264 when Team 1 made 220. Every time this happens somebody in the ground will insist it must be a mistake. It is not. Team 2 has been handed a shorter, fully known innings with all ten wickets, which is a materially easier task than the one Team 1 was set, and DLS charges it accordingly.

Reading the par score ball by ball

Once a chase is under way after an interruption, the par score is the live scoreboard of the match. It is calculated the same way as the target, but using only the resources Team 2 has consumed so far.

Three habits make it readable from a seat in the ground.

Watch what a wicket does to it. Runs push a side above par gradually; a wicket drops it below par in one go, sometimes by ten or fifteen runs. That is because losing a wicket reduces the resources still available, which raises the score the side ought to have reached by now. A side five down with eight overs left can be well ahead of the required run rate and comfortably behind par at the same time.

Ignore the required rate when rain is about. The required rate answers a question that only matters if the full revised innings is completed. Par answers the question the weather is actually asking.

Remember par is a tie, not a win. If the umpires call it off with the score exactly level with par, the match is tied. The chasing side needs to be at least one run clear.

The par figure also explains the aggression you sometimes see from a side that appears to have plenty of time. When the forecast is bad, a captain will happily lose a wicket getting above par, because being one run ahead when the umpires take the covers decision is worth more than being three wickets in hand and behind it.

Minimum overs: when there is no result at all

None of this arithmetic matters until a floor has been reached, and the floor is a fixed number of overs for the side batting second.

Format	Minimum for the side batting second	Typical English competition
Fifty-over	20 overs	Metro Bank One Day Cup, men's and women's ODIs
Twenty20	5 overs	Vitality Blast, international T20s

Below the minimum, there is no par score, no revised target and no result, however commanding one side's position looked. The scorecard simply records "no result" and, in a league, the points are shared.

The 2026 English summer produced clean examples of both outcomes. The first Vitality IT20 between England and India at Seat Unique Riverside on 1 July was abandoned after India had posted 189 for 7, with no result recorded because England never got their minimum. Earlier, England Women's ODI against New Zealand at the County Ground in Northampton on 13 May went the same way. By contrast the third match of that women's series, at Sophia Gardens in Cardiff on 16 May, went far enough for the method to apply and is recorded as a New Zealand win by 17 runs on DLS — that suffix in the result line is the giveaway that a revised target was in play.

Knockout cricket adds a further wrinkle. A no result in a group game is two points each; a no result in a quarter-final is decided by a reserve day or by league position, and the One-Day Cup knockout rules set out how English domestic cricket handles it.

What you can work out from your seat without an app

Four rules of thumb will keep you roughly in the picture even if the ground has no par display.

Early rain moves the numbers a lot; late rain barely moves them. By the time a chase has forty-five of its fifty overs gone, almost all of its resources are spent. Taking away the last three overs subtracts a percentage point or two, so the target drops by a handful of runs at most.

The target never falls as fast as the overs. Halve the overs and you will lose something closer to a third of the target than a half. If the announcement sounds too generous to the chasing side, you have probably misheard it.

Wickets in hand are worth more than usual when it is raining. A side nine down cannot use overs it is given back. Its par score barely improves whatever the umpires decide.

Check the clock, not just the sky. Every match has a cut-off time after which the minimum overs cannot be squeezed in. Once you know that time, you know whether the covers coming off is going to produce a contest or a formality. The guide to rain, bad light and English playing conditions covers how umpires manage lost time and how much of a day can be reclaimed.

DLS in English domestic and club cricket

Two implementations exist, and which one applies to the match in front of you depends on the level.

The standard edition works from a printed table and a pocket calculator, which makes it usable by two umpires and a scorer with no laptop. It is what you will find in league cricket across the country, from the Surrey Championship to the Bradford League, and in the recreational game generally.

The professional edition uses a computerised model with an adjustment for very high first-innings totals, and it is the one in use at international level and in the top domestic competitions. It handles a 380-run first innings far better than the table does, which is why it became standard once fifty-over scores began climbing.

They can produce different targets for the same situation, and the difference grows as the first-innings score grows. Nothing about how you read the scoreboard changes; only the number does.

For English competitions specifically, the rules of county one-day cricket and the One-Day Cup format guide set out the playing conditions that sit around the method, and the equivalent Vitality Blast playing conditions cover the Twenty20 version, where five overs is all that stands between a contest and an abandonment. In the Championship there is no DLS at all: four-day cricket has no target to revise, so lost time simply becomes a draw.

Frequently asked questions

How do you calculate a DLS target?

Take the first side's score, multiply by the ratio of the second side's resources to the first side's resources, round down and add one. If the second side has more resources than the first, you instead add a proportion of an average-total constant rather than multiplying. All three worked examples above follow one of those two routes.

What does DLS par score mean?

It is the score at which the match would be tied if play were abandoned at that instant. Ahead of par and the chasing side wins; level and it is a tie; behind and it loses. It is recalculated after every ball and after every wicket.

Why did the target go up after the rain?

Because the side batting first had its innings cut short and never used its full allocation, while the side batting second received a complete, shorter innings with all ten wickets. When the chasing side ends up with more resources, the method adds runs rather than removing them. Example three above shows the arithmetic.

How many overs are needed for a DLS result?

Twenty for the side batting second in a fifty-over match, five in a Twenty20. Below that there is no result at all, regardless of the position.

Does the County Championship use DLS?

No. There is no revised target in a format with no over limit. Time lost to weather in a four-day match reduces the overs available to force a result, and a match that runs out of time is a draw. The Championship explainer covers how the points are shared when that happens.

Where can I see the par score at an English ground?

Modern screens at Emirates Old Trafford, Edgbaston, the Kia Oval and Headingley carry it during an interrupted chase. Smaller county grounds often do not, so a scores app or BBC Test Match Special on headphones is the reliable route — the options are set out in how to watch cricket in the UK.

Is there anything I should do differently if rain is forecast on my match day?

Check the ground's rain policy before you travel, keep your ticket, and get to your seat quickly when the covers come off, because a shortened chase moves fast. The Old Trafford match day guide covers a venue with unusually good drainage, and the autumn white-ball fixtures against Sri Lanka are exactly the sort of late-season matches where the method earns its keep. For the wider picture of when rain is likeliest, see the English cricket season month by month; for the terminology used above, the cricket statistics glossary and how to read a scorecard fill in the gaps; and everything else lives in the England cricket section.