Cricket explained
The basics
How does cricket work?
Two teams of 11 take turns to bat and bowl. The batting side tries to score runs and the fielding side tries to get its batters out. Each turn is an innings, and it ends when ten batters are out or the overs run out. The side with more runs at the end wins.
How many players are in a cricket team?
Eleven a side. Two batters are in at once, one at each end of the pitch, while all 11 fielders are on the field. Most competitions now allow a concussion substitute, and the IPL lets each side bring in one Impact Player during the match.
What is an over?
Six legal balls bowled in a row by one bowler from one end. Then a different bowler bowls the next over from the other end. Wides and no-balls don’t count towards the six, so an over can run longer.
How long is a cricket pitch?
22 yards (20.12 metres) between the two sets of stumps. The pitch is the strip of short grass in the middle; the field around it is roughly oval, with boundaries usually 60 to 80 metres from the centre in professional cricket.
What are the stumps and bails?
The wicket at each end is three wooden stumps with two bails resting in grooves on top. A batter is bowled or run out when a bail is knocked off.
What does the toss decide?
The home captain flips a coin and the visiting captain calls. The winner chooses whether to bat or bowl first. In men’s T20 leagues from 2021 to 2025, 69% of captains who won the toss chose to bowl, so they would know the target when they batted.
Is it batsman or batter?
Batter. The Laws of Cricket switched to batter in 2021 so the same word covers men’s and women’s cricket, and most broadcasters and papers followed.
Formats
| Format | Overs | Innings | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Test | No limit | 2 each | Up to 5 days |
| ODI | 50 | 1 each | About 8 hours |
| T20 | 20 | 1 each | About 3½ hours |
| The Hundred | 100 balls | 1 each | About 2½ hours |
What is a Test match?
The longest form of international cricket: up to five days, with each side batting twice. A day has three sessions of about two hours, broken by lunch and tea, and 90 overs scheduled. If the side batting last isn’t bowled out and doesn’t reach its target by the end of day five, the match is drawn.
How many overs are in an ODI?
Fifty overs a side. An ODI (one-day international) takes about eight hours, and each side bats once. The ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup is played in this format every four years.
How many overs are in a T20?
Twenty overs a side, so 120 legal balls each. A T20 takes about three and a half hours, which is why it is the format of the franchise leagues: the IPL, the Big Bash, the CPL and the rest. The T20 leagues
What is The Hundred?
An English competition where each side faces 100 balls. Bowlers bowl in sets of five or ten balls from the same end, and a bowler can bowl at most 20. The men’s and women’s competitions run side by side each August.
What is first-class cricket?
Matches of three days or more with two innings a side, played between teams of a standard the ICC recognises: Tests, and domestic competitions such as the County Championship in England and the Ranji Trophy in India. First-class competitions
What is List A cricket?
Domestic one-day cricket, usually 50 overs a side, played at a recognised professional standard. ODIs count as List A too, so a player’s List A record includes them. One-day domestic cups
What is a day-night Test?
A Test played into the evening under floodlights with a pink ball, which holds its colour better than the red one under lights. The ball tends to swing more once the lights take over, so the evening session is often when wickets fall.
Scoring runs
How do you score runs in cricket?
The batters run between the wickets: one run each time they swap ends. A shot that reaches the boundary along the ground scores four, and one that clears it without bouncing scores six, with no running needed. Extras such as wides and no-balls add runs too.
How do you read a cricket score?
Runs, then wickets: 245/6 (or 245-6) means 245 runs for the loss of six wickets. In Australia it is written the other way round, 6/245. The overs follow in brackets, so 245/6 (42.3) means 42 overs and three balls have been bowled.
What is a good score in T20?
It depends on the ground and the conditions, and it has risen fast. In the IPL the average first-innings score in decided full-length matches went from 168 in 2019 to 196 in 2026. Each of our match previews gives a par score for the ground. Upcoming previews
What is a century?
A hundred runs by one batter in an innings, the milestone every batter plays for. Fifty is a half-century, and 200 a double-century.
What is a duck?
Out for nought. A golden duck is out first ball, and a pair is two ducks in the same two-innings match.
What is the run rate?
Runs scored per over. The required rate (or asking rate) is the runs a chasing side still needs divided by the overs it has left: 60 off 6 overs is 10 an over.
What is net run rate?
How league tables split teams level on points: the runs a team scores per over across the tournament, minus the runs per over scored against it. A side bowled out is treated as having faced its full overs.
Wides, no-balls and extras
What is a wide?
A ball the batter can’t reach from a normal stance, judged by the umpire. It adds one run to the batting side and has to be bowled again. In limited-overs cricket almost anything down the leg side is called wide.
What is a no-ball?
An illegal delivery: most often the bowler’s front foot lands beyond the popping crease, but a full toss above waist height or too many fielders outside the circle also count. It adds one run plus anything the batter scores off it, it has to be bowled again, and the batter can’t be out bowled, caught or LBW from it.
What is a free hit?
The ball after a no-ball in limited-overs cricket. The batter can’t be out bowled, caught, LBW or stumped off it, only run out (or the rarities, such as obstructing the field), so they swing freely.
What are byes and leg byes?
Runs taken when the batter hasn’t hit the ball. Byes come when the ball beats the bat and the keeper, and leg byes when it comes off the batter’s body. They count to the team, not the batter or the bowler.
What are penalty runs?
Five runs the umpires award for an offence: the ball hitting a fielder’s helmet left on the ground, deliberate time-wasting, or damaging the pitch.
Getting out
- Caught
- Tests 59%T20 leagues 64%
- Bowled
- Tests 19%T20 leagues 17%
- LBW
- Tests 16%T20 leagues 7%
- Run out
- Tests 2%T20 leagues 6%
- Stumped
- Tests 2%T20 leagues 2%
How many ways can you get out in cricket?
Ten: caught, bowled, leg before wicket (LBW), run out, stumped, hit wicket, obstructing the field, hit the ball twice, timed out and retired out. Handled the ball was folded into obstructing the field in 2017.
What is the most common way to get out?
Caught, by a distance. In the 208 men’s Tests from 2021 to 2025, 59% of dismissals were caught, 19% bowled and 16% LBW. In men’s T20 leagues over the same years LBW falls to 7% and run-outs rise to 6%.
What is LBW?
Leg before wicket: the ball hits the batter’s body (usually the pad) when it would otherwise have gone on to hit the stumps. It isn’t out if the ball pitched outside leg stump, or if it hit the batter outside the line of off stump while they were playing a shot.
What is DRS?
The Decision Review System. Each side can ask the TV umpire to check an on-field decision using replays, ball tracking and edge detection. A side keeps its review if the decision is overturned or stands on umpire’s call. When ball tracking shows the ball only just clipping the stumps, the on-field call stands: that is umpire’s call.
What is a run out?
A fielder breaks the wicket with the ball while a batter is out of their ground, short of the crease, during a run. The batter running to that end is out.
What is stumped?
The wicketkeeper breaks the wicket while the batter has stepped out of the crease to play at the ball and missed. It is a dismissal for slow bowlers above all.
Is a run out at the non-striker’s end legal?
Yes. A bowler can run out a non-striker who leaves the crease before the ball is bowled. Long called Mankading and frowned on as unsporting, it was moved into the run-out law in 2022.
What is a hat-trick?
Three wickets in three consecutive balls by the same bowler. They can be spread across two overs, or even two innings of a Test.
Results
How do you win a cricket match?
Score more runs than the other side. A team that bats first and wins does so by runs (by 30 runs); a team that chases and wins does so by wickets, the number it had left (by five wickets). In a Test, a side that only needs to bat once wins by an innings.
Can a Test match end in a draw?
Yes, when time runs out before either side wins. 25 of the 208 men’s Tests from 2021 to 2025 were drawn, about one in eight. A tie, with the scores level after all four innings, has happened twice in Test history.
What is the follow-on?
In a five-day Test, a side that leads by at least 200 runs after the first innings each can make the other side bat again straight away. In a three- or four-day match the margin is 150.
What is a declaration?
The batting captain ends the innings before the side is all out, to leave enough time to bowl the opposition out and win. Declarations only happen in two-innings cricket.
What is a super over?
The tie-break in a limited-overs match. Each side bats for one over with two wickets, and the side with more runs wins. If the super over is tied too, another is played until there is a winner.
What is the DLS method?
Duckworth–Lewis–Stern, the formula for a fair target when rain shortens a limited-overs match. A side’s chances rest on two resources, overs and wickets left, and the target is scaled by how much of them each side gets. A T20 needs five overs a side for a result and an ODI 20. Use our DLS calculator
What does no result mean?
The match was abandoned, usually for rain, before both sides had batted long enough for a result. In a league, each team takes one point.
Batting, bowling and fielding
What is a powerplay?
The overs when fewer fielders are allowed outside the 30-yard circle. In a T20 it is the first six overs, with two fielders out. An ODI has three phases: overs 1 to 10 with two out, 11 to 40 with four, and 41 to 50 with five.
What is the difference between pace and spin bowling?
Fast bowlers beat the batter with speed, bounce and movement in the air (swing) or off the pitch (seam), at up to 150 km/h and beyond. Spinners bowl at 75 to 95 km/h and make the ball turn sharply off the pitch with their fingers or wrist.
What is a googly?
The leg-spinner’s trick ball. It looks like a leg break, out of the back of the hand, but turns the other way: into a right-handed batter instead of away. It is also called a wrong ’un.
What is a yorker?
A full ball aimed at the batter’s feet or the base of the stumps. It is the hardest ball to hit for a boundary, so it is the death bowler’s main weapon at the end of an innings.
What is a maiden over?
An over with no runs off the bat and no wides or no-balls. Byes and leg byes don’t spoil a maiden.
What are the fielding positions?
They are named by their angle to the batter and distance from them. Slips and gully stand behind the bat on the off side for edges; point and cover square and in front on the off side; mid-off and mid-on straight; midwicket and square leg on the leg side; and fine leg and third man behind on either side. Long and deep mean on the boundary, short and silly mean close in.
What is an all-rounder?
A player worth a place for both batting and bowling. A batter who can keep wicket is a wicketkeeper-batter.
Stats
What is a batting average?
Runs scored divided by the number of times out. Not-out innings add runs but not dismissals. In Tests an average over 50 marks one of the best batters in the world.
What is strike rate?
For a batter, runs per 100 balls faced: 30 off 20 balls is a strike rate of 150. For a bowler it means balls bowled per wicket, so lower is better.
What is economy rate?
Runs a bowler concedes per over. Under eight an over is tight in today’s IPL, and under five in an ODI.
What is a bowling average?
Runs conceded per wicket taken, so lower is better. Figures such as 4/23 mean four wickets for 23 runs, and 5-for (five wickets in an innings) is a bowler’s milestone, the equal of a batter’s century.
Who are the best players in the world?
The ICC ranks players on a points system built from recent matches. Our rankings rate every player by the runs they are worth to their side a match, set against an average player, from every ball they’ve faced or bowled. Player rankings
Competitions
What is the Ashes?
The Test series between England and Australia, played since 1882 and named after a mock obituary for English cricket. The trophy is a small urn. A series is usually five Tests, and the holders keep the Ashes if it is drawn.
What is the World Test Championship?
A two-year league of the top Test sides, each playing six series. Places are ranked by the share of points won, and the top two meet in a one-off final.
How often is the Cricket World Cup?
The men’s 50-over World Cup is every four years, and the men’s T20 World Cup every two. The women’s World Cups run on their own schedule, in the same two formats.
What is the IPL?
The Indian Premier League, a ten-team T20 tournament played each spring since 2008. Squads are bought at an auction, each side may field four overseas players, and it is the richest league in the game. Indian Premier League
Who are the ICC’s Full Members?
The 12 nations that play Test cricket: Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, West Indies and Zimbabwe. Around 100 more are Associate Members.