JOHANNESBURG, March 5: Scoreboards will display Duckworth/Lewis targets during World Cup Super Six matches if organisers can find a foolproof way of doing it, a leading cricket official said on Wednesday.

Hosts South Africa were knocked out of the tournament on Monday after falling foul of the rule in a rain-shortened Group ‘B’ match against Sri Lanka, amid confusion over how many runs they needed to win.

Dave Richardson, the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) general manager for cricket, said he hoped to display the targets — calculated according to a complicated formula depending on run rate and wickets fallen — for the remaining games in the tournament.

“We are investigating from a technical point of view whether it is possible,” Richardson told Reuters after a news conference. “If we can get a system which is all but foolproof, then I’d like to get that up for the Super Six matches.”

Some countries, including England and Australia, already display Duckworth/Lewis targets on scoreboards, as recommended by the ICC.

But Richardson said the system would have to be entirely computerised to be used in the remaining World Cup matches to eliminate any possibility of human error.

“Certainly with the scoreboards that we have in South Africa there’s no reason why we can’t display it on the scoreboard,” Richardson said.

In one-day matches where no target is displayed on the board, captains often carry paper copies of the number of runs needed at different stages if the match is abandoned for rain or any other reason.—Reuters