Most Productive Overs method

If an interruption means that the innings of the team batting second is reduced to a total of X overs, their target score is adjusted as follows:

${\displaystyle {\text{Team 2's new target from their total of X overs }}={\text{ Runs scored by Team 1 in their highest-scoring X overs }}+1.}$

Whereas the Average Run Rate method heavily favoured the team batting second (Team 2), the Most Productive Overs method only favoured the team batting first (Team 1). ^[3]

There are four intrinsic flaws in the method:

• Firstly, it effectively penalised Team 2 for good bowling, as it ignored their best overs in setting the revised target.
• Secondly, the method took no consideration of wickets lost, but how Team 1 scored their total.
• Thirdly, substantial bookwork was required by the umpires and officials to determine the revised target.
• Fourthly, if the least productive x overs were maiden overs, Team 2 would have been left in the position of matching or beating Team 1's actual total, but with fewer overs to do so.

Two subsequent modifications were used: resetting the target based on the x consecutive most productive overs of Team 1's innings (where x is the number of overs Team 2 is to face), and reducing the target by 0.5% for each over lost, with the revised target being given by the next highest integer.

While these modifications reduced Team 1's advantage, they only addressed the fourth intrinsic flaw of the method.