The Duckworth Lewis Method, Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, Friday, September 27.

IT’S not your average gig that has audience members wearing full cricket whites, but then The Duckworth Lewis Method aren’t exactly your average band.

Started in 2009 by The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon and Pugwash’s Thomas Walsh, the band’s self-titled cricket-themed debut was launched to critical acclaim to coincide with The Ashes, and the second album Sticky Wickets, was released earlier this year.

Walking onstage to the Test Match Special theme tune, wearing a variety of vintage dapper hats, suits, and facial hair, the band have an easy, relaxed charm which instantly endears them to the audience – though you’d imagine there aren’t many who weren’t already fans. In any case, if they weren't at the start of the show, by the end they were converts.

Hannon and Walsh have great chemistry, good naturedly bickering and mocking each other, and their interaction with the audience goes beyond the call-and-response of It’s Just Not Cricket, with Walsh using one audience member’s phone to get them a unique picture, and Hannon cheerily telling Divine Comedy fans “you’re just going to have to go home sad”, when they called for a visit to his back catalogue.

Musically, the tracks vary wildly, from The Third Man’s ELO-stylings, while Line And Length sounds like 80s Prince. Hannon himself calls Out In The Middle “dangerously close to Steely Dan”, while the excellent Jiggery Pokery is practically a music hall standard.

The winning Irish charm of the act ensure there is plenty of fun to be had, but to write the quirky, whimsical concept albums off as lightweight when the talent is this good and the songs are so well written and performed… well, it just wouldn’t be cricket.