Frankly speaking, I don't understand Duckworth-Lewis. I just wait for the umpire's decision.

- Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Indian Captain

When Gene Tunney knocked out Jack Dempsey to win the world heavyweight boxing championship in 1926, Dempsey explained his defeat to his wife with a rueful smile, "Honey, I forgot to duck."

On Monday, March 30, 1981, United States President Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr. His lung was punctured, yet Reagan insisted on walking into the emergency room.

When his wife, Nancy, arrived, worried and scared, he looked up at her and said with a smile, "Honey, I forgot to duck."

Worth of a duck

Given the circumstances, you have to ask yourself how much is a duck worth in such circumstances and whether forgetting to duck is as bad as being ignorant of the value of the duck or its worth.

John Dyson, the West Indies cricket coach, who had four ducks in his Test career as an Australian opening batsman, knows about ducks but seemed to be ignorant about the Duckworth-Lewis (D/L).

This is a mathematical way to calculate the target score for the team batting second in a one-day or 20/20 cricket match interrupted by bad light, poor weather or other circumstances such as a bee-attack (Bangalore 1981) or an invasion of locusts (something that happened in Australia; it was a case of crickets versus cricket.

In the case of Dyson, it was neither cricket nor crickets. Andrew McGlashan, in an article titled 'Dyson blunder hands England shock win' wrote, "An amazing miscalculation from West Indies coach John Dyson handed England an extraordinary victory in the opening one-day international, at the Providence Stadium in Guyana, when he misread the Duckworth-Lewis chart and called his batsmen in when they were two behind the required target."

Michael Jeh, in a cricinfo.com blog, asked about the role of the coach: "Is it to literally 'coach' the players in the skills of the game, is it to help with slips catching and fielding drills or is it as tactician/strategist/statistician? John Dyson's confused actions in last night's farce begs the question: Was it Dyson's fault and what exactly is his role?"

He added, "Judging by Dyson's miscalculations today, he is certainly no statistician or mathematician."

Spirit of sportsmanship

Jeh, a former Oxford Blue, made the most important point of all, one that relates directly to the spirit of the game and the sportsmanship that has long characterised the West Indian approach to the game and for which we are justly famous, "If Dyson realised that his team was behind the run rate, you can bet he would have thought the light was still good. Perhaps it should be left purely to the umpires to make that decision.

"Left to coaches or players, it appears that the definition of bad light depends on where your team is in relation to D/L. That sort of cynicism has no place in this great game - either the light was good enough or bad enough but the definition should not rely on whether you're ahead of the rate or not."

In the meantime, Dyson has ducked out of his front and centre seat in plain public view and can be only seen through a glass darkly. He is also strangely silent.

It makes me wonder whether the duct tape the players used to cover up their sponsor's logo has now found better use. Pity they did not do that to Ramnarine as well.

Tony Deyal was last seen saying that maybe Dyson needs a new computer to help him understand Duckworth. Instead of a PC, he should have a Quack-intosh.