HAVING no cricket to report on while I have been away over the last three weeks, I attended an umpire's training course in New Zealand.

This was just for interest to see if their approach was different to ours and I ended up getting a little involved – I just couldn’t help it.

So I have decided on a slightly different tack this week in my capacity of LCB ACO scorers officer.

A few weeks ago I had the responsibility of operating the Duckworth-Lewis system in a rain-affected match for the county, along with my colleague David Heap.

The system was used at all four quarter-finals in the Lancashire Knockout competition and from all accounts, scorers involved at all matches thought it proved a success as everyone was kept aware of what was required by the end of every over.

In recent months several of us have looked at various apps so that a laptop didn’t need to be used, but we couldn’t get a uniform result and often inputting the same information within a minute of the previous one got a different answer.

D/L is also available with computer scoring packages but as leagues have different versions, the county decided to use the professional DLS version which is used in county matches.

This still involves a laptop and is not an app but a definite programme, providing tables to follow at all stages of the game.

One of the biggest obstacles was explaining why a score could increase at the end of the first innings.

For example, after 38 overs had been bowled the score was 206-3 but the target score for the side batting second proved to be 243.

The reason behind this was the side batting first had lost seven overs from their allocation of 45.

A side plans their innings for the full 45 overs and as it is usually the last few overs when batsmen hit out, D/L takes that into consideration.

If rain affects the second innings the total is not reduced as much as a team batting second has all 10 wickets available to chase the score.

To say there were a few puzzled faces was an understatement, but at the end of the game spectators said they thought it was a great idea as at the end of the over a target D/L score was put up for all to see to what it should be at the end of that over.

I had heard the county wanted it used at all Lancashire Knockout matches but there aren’t enough scorers familiar with the programme, hence it was restricted to the quarter-finals onwards.

Who knows what will happen next year?