The VJD method is the rain rule Indian domestic cricket uses to reset a target when a limited-overs match is cut short. It is named after V Jayadevan, an engineer from Kerala who built it as an alternative to the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) method, and the BCCI has run its one-day and T20 domestic cricket on it since 2007.
It is still in service. The 2025-26 Vijay Hazare Trophy alone produced four VJD results, including both quarter-finals played on 12 January 2026.
What it has never done is cross over. The ICC uses DLS in every international match, and so does the Indian T20 League. VJD lives entirely inside Indian domestic cricket, which is why an Indian follower sees it on a scorecard several times a season and never once in a match played abroad.
What does VJD stand for in cricket?
VJD stands for V Jayadevan. Its formal name is Jayadevan’s system, and the initials are simply his. He devised the first version in 1998 and took it to the BCCI’s technical committee in July 2000; the board approved it for domestic limited-overs cricket in September 2007, when the technical committee was led by Sunil Gavaskar.
How the VJD method works
VJD is built on two curves rather than one table.
The first is the normal score curve. It describes how a side actually scores when nothing interrupts it and it bats its full quota, and it moves with two things: the percentage of overs used and the percentage of wickets lost.
The second is the target curve. It describes how a chasing side has to speed up once overs have been taken away, and it moves with the percentage of overs only.
The reason for two curves is the part that separates VJD from DLS. Jayadevan’s model treats an innings as a sequence of distinct scoring phases rather than one smooth slope, and it splits a full innings into seven of them by proportion of overs:
| Share of the innings | Phase |
| First 10% | Settling down |
| Next 20% | Exploiting the field restrictions |
| Next 30% | Stabilising the innings (two phases) |
| Next 20% | Beginning to accelerate |
| Next 10% | Second acceleration |
| Last 10% | The slog |
In practice nobody works either curve out by hand. The system ships as six base sets of tables from which its software can generate 1,701 different sets, and it picks the appropriate one according to what the side batting first scored. A target that follows a 320 is not drawn from the same table as a target that follows a 180.
Does the VJD method ignore wickets?
No, and this is the most common thing said about it that is not true.
The claim comes from a real feature of the system, stated too broadly. The target curve is not directly dependent on wickets in hand, so once a target has been set, the number on the board does not move as the chasing side loses batters. But the normal curve, which is what the target is derived from in the first place, depends on the fall of wickets as well as overs used.
So wickets are in the calculation. They enter it at a different point from where they enter DLS, where a single resource figure combines overs remaining and wickets lost and is recalculated at every interruption. Any method that genuinely ignored wickets would treat 10 for 0 after 10 overs and 60 for 6 after 10 overs as the same position, and neither of these two does.
VJD method vs DLS method
| DLS method | VJD method | |
| Devised by | Frank Duckworth, Tony Lewis, later revised by Steven Stern | V Jayadevan |
| Core model | One resource figure combining overs remaining and wickets lost | Two curves, one for a normal innings and one for a chase |
| Shape of an innings | A single resource curve | Seven separate scoring phases |
| Wickets | Resources fall with every wicket, at every interruption | In the normal curve; the target curve tracks overs only |
| First innings score | Same resource table whatever the total | Table selected according to the first innings total |
| Used in | All international cricket, the Indian T20 League, leagues worldwide | BCCI domestic limited-overs cricket |
For how DLS turns resources into a number, with a worked example and what the published record says about whether it favours the side chasing, see our explainer on the DLS method in cricket. The related idea of a par score — what the chasing side needs to be level at a given point — works the same way under either system.
VJD results in the 2025-26 Vijay Hazare Trophy
The clearest answer to “is the VJD method still used” is a scorecard. Four matches in the 2025-26 Vijay Hazare Trophy, played between 24 December 2025 and 18 January 2026, were settled on it.
| Date | Match | Scores | Result |
| 31 Dec 2025 | Assam v Uttar Pradesh, Rajkot | Assam 308 (48.4); UP 291/2 (42) | Uttar Pradesh won by 58 runs |
| 6 Jan 2026 | Andhra v Haryana, Alur | Andhra 324 (49.5); Haryana 307/7 (48) | Match tied |
| 12 Jan 2026 | Mumbai v Karnataka, Bengaluru (QF) | Mumbai 254/8 (50); Karnataka 187/1 (33) | Karnataka won by 55 runs |
| 12 Jan 2026 | Uttar Pradesh v Saurashtra, Bengaluru (QF) | UP 310/8 (50); Saurashtra 238/3 (40.1) | Saurashtra won by 17 runs |
The two quarter-finals show what the method is for. Karnataka were 187 for 1 in the 33rd over chasing 255, and Saurashtra 238 for 3 in the 41st chasing 311, when the rain came. Both were ahead of where VJD said they needed to be, and both went through on it. Saurashtra reached the final, where Vidarbha beat them by 38 runs for a first Vijay Hazare title.
Where the VJD method is used
VJD covers the BCCI’s limited-overs domestic calendar, which is where an Indian follower will actually meet it:
- The Vijay Hazare Trophy, the 50-over inter-state competition
- The Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, its T20 equivalent
- State T20 leagues, including the Tamil Nadu Premier League
It also ran in two tournaments that no longer exist. The Indian Cricket League, the unsanctioned league of 2007-09, used it, and so did the Karnataka Premier League before that competition was wound up in the wake of the 2019 fixing arrests and replaced in 2022 by the Maharaja Trophy KSCA T20.
It is not used in international cricket, and it is not used in the Indian T20 League.
Why the ICC turned the VJD method down
Jayadevan pushed for a wider hearing for years, and twice came close.
In December 2010 it was reported that the BCCI had decided his system would be used in the fourth edition of the Indian T20 League. It was not, and the tournament stayed on Duckworth-Lewis.
The bigger decision came in 2012. The ICC’s cricket committee, chaired by the former West Indies captain Clive Lloyd, considered VJD as a replacement for D/L and kept D/L. The committee’s position was that there was no evidence of significant flaws in the existing method and no demonstrated improvement in the proposed one. Jayadevan disputed the process rather than accepting the verdict, arguing that the panel had not been neutral, and asked the then ICC president Sharad Pawar for an independent review. It did not happen, and DLS has remained the international standard since.
So the method has a full-time job and no route out of it. It decides Indian domestic knockouts several times a season, and has not been used anywhere else in nearly two decades of trying.
Author: Kaustubh Potdar
Featured photo: Munir Uz Zaman