Cheer up, West Indies fans. At least this wasn’t a must-win match in the 2003 World Cup, when the South Africans misread their Duckworth-Lewis papers and crashed out of the tournament. A recap:
Mark Boucher had just clubbed Muttiah Muralitharan over long on for six and then celebrated the shot that he – and all his team-mates – believed had carried South Africa through to the Super Sixes with a clenched fist.
The reality, however, could not have been more different.
Boucher had carried out his instructions to the letter by getting his side up to 229 by the end of the 45th over.
The 229 that they had believed was the winning total was in fact the score for a tie and only a win would have seen South Africa progress.
What he wasn’t to know, though, was that someone in the South African dressing room had been misreading the Duckworth/Lewis sheet that gives the teams the targets in the event of rain.
Ducking Beamers: A Cricket Blog 
http://themixer.org.uk/2009/03/21/negative/
[…] The only thing that may perhaps comfort him is that he is not alone. The South Africans famously messed up their 2003 World Cup campaign by hitting a drawing score instead a winning one, and then […]