Cricket statistics glossary: every key term explained

Cricket has accumulated its vocabulary over a very long time and has thrown almost none of it away. The result is a statistics page carrying terms invented for a handwritten scorebook alongside measures that did not exist before ball-tracking cameras. Some of the words mean the opposite of what they appear to mean, several are used differently by different publishers, and a few sound like jargon but are doing precise arithmetic underneath.

This is a working reference for the terms a reader actually meets. Each entry explains what the term measures, how it is calculated where a calculation is involved, and where it misleads.

Batting measures

Runs

Runs scored off the bat. This excludes byes and leg byes, which are credited to the team and to nobody in particular, and excludes the penalty run charged for a wide or a no ball. Runs scored off the bat from a no ball do count to the batter.

Balls faced

The number of deliveries a batter has dealt with. A no ball counts as a ball faced, because the batter had something to play at. A wide does not, because by definition it was out of reach. Balls faced is the denominator of the strike rate and the single most useful column for judging whether any other batting figure is worth reading.

Not out

A batter who was still at the crease when the innings ended. It is marked with an asterisk after the score. An innings can end not out because the overs ran out, because the last wicket fell at the other end, or because the captain declared. It is a description of how the innings finished, not of how well the batter played, and it is the reason the batting average and the runs-per-innings figure are different numbers.

Batting average

Runs scored divided by the number of times dismissed. Not divided by innings. Every not-out innings adds runs to the top of the fraction and nothing to the bottom, which is why a lower-order batter who is frequently stranded carries an average well above what they typically contribute in a single innings. The average answers a narrow question: how many runs arrive for each dismissal this batter costs the side.

Runs per innings

Runs divided by innings played, ignoring whether the batter was out. It is not usually printed as a column, but the two components are always available, and comparing it with the batting average is the quickest test of whether an average is being inflated by not-outs. Close together means the average is honest. Far apart means the average is describing a role.

Batting strike rate

Runs divided by balls faced, multiplied by 100. A strike rate of 130 means 130 runs per 100 deliveries. Higher is better. It has none of the not-out distortion of the average, but it carries no information about duration, so it needs a decent volume of balls behind it before it means anything. Note that bowling strike rate is a completely different quantity measured in the opposite direction.

Boundary percentage

The proportion of a batter's runs that came in fours and sixes, or in some presentations the proportion of balls faced that went to the boundary. A very high boundary percentage means the batter is scoring in bursts and not rotating the strike, which is a risk profile as much as a scoring profile. A low one alongside a high strike rate means the batter is running hard and keeping the scoreboard moving without taking on the field.

Dot ball percentage, batting

The proportion of deliveries faced from which no run was scored. It is the most direct measure of pressure absorbed. In limited-overs cricket a batter with a high dot ball percentage is transferring the deficit to whoever bats next, because the runs not scored have to be found from a smaller number of remaining deliveries. Two batters with identical strike rates can have very different dot ball percentages, and the one who plays fewer dots is usually the safer choice, because they are not relying on boundaries to make up ground.

Control percentage

A ball-by-ball measure, recorded by an analyst rather than derived from the scorecard, of the proportion of deliveries a batter met as intended. A ball that beats the bat, takes a thick edge, pops up short of a fielder or hits the pad is recorded as not controlled, regardless of whether it produced runs. A batter can score quickly with poor control, and that combination usually predicts a short innings. Control percentage is the closest thing cricket has to a measure of how well someone is actually batting, as opposed to what the outcome happened to be.

False shot percentage

The mirror of control percentage, being the proportion of deliveries that were not controlled. Publications use one or the other, and they sum to 100. It is more often quoted from a bowler's perspective, as the rate of false shots a bowler induces, which is a better measure of a good spell than the wicket column when the catches have gone down.

Duck

Being dismissed for nought. The name comes from the shape of the zero on the scoreboard, a duck's egg. A batter who is not out for nought has not made a duck.

Golden duck

Dismissed for nought off the first ball faced. A diamond duck is being dismissed without facing a delivery at all, which almost always means being run out at the non-striker's end, and some publications reserve the term for a first-ball dismissal without facing. A pair is a duck in both innings of the same match. A king pair is a golden duck in both innings.

Fifty, hundred, double hundred

Milestone scores in a single innings. On a statistics page these appear as counts: the number of innings in which the batter passed fifty, and the number in which they passed a hundred. The fifty count usually excludes innings that went on to a hundred, so the two columns are read together. Milestones are conventions rather than measures of anything in particular, but they carry information about how often a batter converts a start.

Conversion rate

The proportion of fifties that become hundreds. A batter who reaches fifty often but rarely goes on is producing innings that look good on a card and do less for the side than the raw count of scores suggests.

Carrying the bat

An opener who bats through a completed innings in which the side is bowled out, finishing not out. It is recorded as a distinct achievement because it means the batter faced the whole innings while ten partners were dismissed around them.

Nightwatchman

A lower-order batter promoted late in the day, usually in a Test, to face the remaining overs so that a specialist batter does not have to start an innings in poor light against a hard ball. The tactic protects the batter who would otherwise come in; the cost is that the nightwatchman occupies a position they are not equipped for. Nightwatchman innings drag an average downwards in a way that has nothing to do with the player's batting ability, which is worth remembering when reading a lower-order batter's Test average.

Anchor, finisher, pinch hitter

Role descriptions rather than measures, but they explain figures that otherwise look wrong. An anchor bats through a limited-overs innings at a moderate rate while others attack around them. A finisher enters in the closing overs with instructions to attack immediately, and will carry a low average and a very high strike rate because both are products of the job. A pinch hitter is promoted up the order to attack the new ball in a shortened chase or a powerplay, an assignment in which failure is the expected outcome most of the time.

Top order, middle order, lower order, tail

Positions one to three are the top order, four to six the middle, seven and eight the lower order, and nine to eleven the tail. Averages are not comparable across these groups. The top order faces the new ball and the freshest bowlers; the lower order faces an older ball but has fewer partners left and more not-outs.

Bowling measures

Overs

Six legal deliveries. On a card, a bowling figure of 8.3 means eight complete overs and three further balls, which is eight and a half overs. It is not eight point three. Any economy rate calculated from the decimal as written will be wrong.

Maiden

An over from which no runs are charged to the bowler. Byes and leg byes conceded during the over do not spoil a maiden, because they are not the bowler's runs. A wide or a no ball does spoil it, because those are charged to the bowler. Maidens are a Test and first-class measure primarily; in Twenty20 they are rare enough to be an event.

Wicket maiden

A maiden in which the bowler also takes a wicket. Some scorecards give it a separate column; most fold it into the maidens count.

Runs conceded

Everything scored off the bat from the bowler's deliveries, plus wides and no balls, plus any runs run or boundaries resulting from those illegal deliveries, plus overthrows arising from the ball. Byes, leg byes and penalty runs are excluded. This is why the bowlers' runs column never sums to the team total: the difference is exactly the byes, leg byes and penalties.

Wickets

Dismissals credited to the bowler. A bowler is credited when the delivery caused the dismissal: bowled, caught, leg before wicket, stumped and hit wicket. A bowler is not credited for a run out, obstructing the field, hitting the ball twice or timed out, because the delivery did not cause them.

Economy rate

Runs conceded divided by overs bowled. Lower is better. It is a pure measure of containment and involves no wickets at all, which makes it the right number for a death bowler and an incomplete one for a Test strike bowler. Convert part-overs to sixths before calculating.

Bowling average

Runs conceded divided by wickets taken. Lower is better. It is the price of a wicket, and unlike the batting average it has no structural distortion built into its definition. Its weakness is that it merges containment and wicket-taking into one figure, so two bowlers with the same average can be doing entirely different jobs.

Bowling strike rate

Balls bowled divided by wickets taken. Lower is better. A strike rate of 48 means a wicket every forty-eight deliveries, or once every eight overs. It measures how often a bowler breaks through, without regard to cost, which makes it the primary measure in Test cricket where a side must take twenty wickets in a fixed amount of time.

The three bowling measures are linked: bowling average = economy × strike rate ÷ 6. Any two give the third.

Five-for

Five or more wickets in a single innings, written as 5/42 or "five for 42". It is the standard benchmark for an outstanding individual bowling performance and appears on statistics pages as a career count. A five-wicket haul means the same thing. Six, seven or more wickets in an innings all count as a five-for for this column.

Ten-for

Ten or more wickets in a match, across both innings. On a Test statistics page the ten-for column sits next to the five-for column and counts match hauls rather than innings hauls. Ten wickets in a single innings, meaning all ten, is a separate and far rarer event, and where a page means that it will say so explicitly. Because it requires two innings, the ten-for column is empty for limited-overs cricket.

Best bowling figures, BBI and BBM

BBI is best bowling in an innings, the best single-innings return of a career. BBM is best bowling in a match, the best combined return across both innings of a match, and appears only for multi-innings formats. Both are written wickets first: 6/28.

Hat-trick

Three wickets in three consecutive deliveries by the same bowler. The deliveries may span two overs, or two innings, or in first-class cricket two days, as long as they are consecutive balls bowled by that bowler. Wides and no balls do not break the sequence for the deliveries that count, because they are not legal balls, though the runs are charged.

Dot ball percentage, bowling

The proportion of a bowler's legal deliveries from which no run was scored. In white-ball cricket it is often a better guide to a bowler's containment than economy, because economy can be wrecked by a single over while a high dot ball rate reflects sustained pressure. It is also the mechanism by which a containing bowler produces wickets at the other end.

Spell

An unbroken sequence of overs bowled by the same bowler from the same end. Spell figures are not usually in the summary table but are often quoted in match reports, because a bowler's day is frequently two or three quite different spells averaged into one line.

Wide

A delivery judged out of the batter's reach as they stood. One run is charged to the bowler and to the extras, the ball does not count towards the over, and it is bowled again. White-ball cricket applies the wide line far more strictly than Test cricket, which is one reason economy rates are not comparable across formats.

No ball

An illegal delivery. The most common cause is the bowler's front foot landing beyond the popping crease, but a delivery above waist height on the full, too many bouncers in an over, a fielding infringement and various other breaches also produce one. One run is charged to the bowler, the ball is bowled again, and in white-ball cricket a free hit usually follows, on which the batter can only be dismissed by the means that apply when a no ball has been bowled.

Team and innings measures

Run rate

Runs scored divided by overs faced, expressed as runs per over. It is the basic measure of an innings' tempo and appears on the total line of most limited-overs cards.

Required run rate

In a chase, the runs still needed divided by the overs still available. It is the single most watched number in a limited-overs run chase and the most commonly over-read, because it takes no account of wickets in hand. A side needing seven an over with nine wickets standing and a side needing seven an over with three wickets standing are in different matches.

Net run rate

A tournament tie-breaker. It is the run rate a side has scored at across all its matches minus the run rate it has conceded across all its matches. Two details trip people up. A side bowled out before using its full allocation has its run rate calculated over the full allocation, not the overs it actually faced, which makes being dismissed cheaply doubly damaging. And matches with no result are excluded entirely. Net run rate rewards winning heavily and quickly, and it is why sides chasing small targets in a group stage sometimes bat with apparently reckless urgency.

Partnership

The runs added while a particular pair of batters was at the crease together, along with the balls they used. Partnerships are the natural unit of an innings, and they can be reconstructed from any scorecard by subtracting consecutive fall-of-wickets figures. A partnership record includes runs from extras conceded during the stand, which is why the two batters' individual contributions do not always sum to the partnership total.

Fall of wickets

The list recording the team score at each dismissal, usually with the batter's name and the over. It is the only part of a scorecard that preserves the shape of an innings. Two sides can reach the same total through completely different sequences, and only the fall of wickets shows which.

Extras

Runs conceded by the fielding side and credited to no batter: byes, leg byes, wides, no balls and penalty runs. The extras line explains the entire gap between the sum of the individual scores and the team total.

Byes and leg byes

Byes are runs taken when the ball passes both the bat and the wicketkeeper untouched. Leg byes are runs taken when the ball hits the batter's body rather than the bat, and are only allowed if the batter was attempting a stroke or trying to avoid the ball. Neither is charged to the bowler, because the delivery was legal and the batter did not hit it. Both are charged to the team.

Declaration

A captain voluntarily closing the innings with wickets still in hand, available only in multi-innings cricket. It is marked (dec) on the total line. Declarations are made to buy time to bowl the opposition out, and every batter unbeaten at the moment of a declaration is recorded as not out.

Follow-on

In a match of two innings a side, if the side batting first leads by a large enough margin after the first innings, its captain may require the opposition to bat again immediately rather than taking their own second innings. The required lead depends on the scheduled length of the match, and in a five-day Test it is 200 runs. Enforcing the follow-on saves time but commits the fielding side to bowling consecutively, and a captain may decline it to rest the attack. A card notes a following-on innings with (f/o).

All out

An innings ended by dismissals. Ten wickets is the usual figure, but an innings can be all out with fewer if a batter is absent hurt or absent ill, because an innings also ends when nobody is left to come in.

Target

The score a chasing side must reach to win, which is one more than the score needed to tie. In a rain-affected match it may be revised, and it can occasionally be higher than the score the first side actually made.

Par score

In a rain-affected chase, the score the chasing side should have reached at the current point, given the overs used and wickets lost, for the match to be even. If play is abandoned after the minimum overs have been bowled, the side ahead of par wins. Par accounts for wickets; the required run rate does not, which is why a side can be ahead of the rate and behind par at the same time.

Powerplay

A defined block of overs in limited-overs cricket during which fielding restrictions apply, limiting the number of fielders permitted outside the inner circle. The specifics vary by format and competition. Statistics pages increasingly split batting and bowling figures by phase, and powerplay figures are the most commonly separated, because scoring conditions inside the restrictions are so different from those outside them.

Result terms

A side batting second that reaches the target wins by wickets, counting the wickets it had left. A side batting first that defends its total wins by runs, counting the margin. A tie is a match in which the scores are level and the second innings is complete. A draw is a multi-innings match that ran out of time without either side being bowled out or reaching the target, and it is not the same as a tie. A no result is a limited-overs match abandoned before the minimum overs required for a decision.

Dismissals and fielding

The credited dismissals

Bowled, caught, leg before wicket, stumped and hit wicket are all credited to the bowler, because the delivery caused them. On a card they appear as b Jones, c Smith b Jones, lbw b Jones, st Smith b Jones and hit wicket b Jones. In c Smith b Jones the catcher is always named first and the bowler second; the order never reverses.

The uncredited dismissals

Run out, obstructing the field, hit the ball twice and timed out are not credited to any bowler, because the delivery did not cause them. A run out is written with the fielder or fielders responsible in brackets.

Retired hurt and retired out

Retired hurt or retired not out means the batter left the field injured or unwell and may return later in the innings. No wicket falls, and if the batter never returns the innings is treated as not out. Retired out, where a batter leaves for any other reason and does not return, does count as a dismissal, but no bowler is credited.

Catches and stumpings

Fielding statistics record catches taken and, for wicketkeepers, stumpings effected. A wicketkeeper's dismissals column is usually the sum of the two, sometimes split. Dropped catches are not recorded on a scorecard at all, which is the single largest piece of missing information on any card, because a dropped catch changes a bowler's figures and a batter's innings without leaving a trace.

Analytical measures

These are the figures produced by ball-by-ball data rather than by the scorebook. They vary between providers and are not always available, but where a page carries them they usually say more than the classic columns.

Phase splits

Batting and bowling figures broken down by period of the innings: powerplay, middle overs and death in white-ball cricket, or by the age of the ball in Tests. A death bowler's career economy read against a powerplay bowler's is a comparison of two different jobs; the phase split is what makes them comparable.

Average and strike rate by bowling type

A batter's figures separated by pace and spin, and often further by right-arm and left-arm, or by wrist and finger spin. This is the most practically useful split in modern analysis, because a weakness against one type is the most common way a batter is planned against.

Average by position

A batter's figures split by where they batted. It is the direct answer to the problem that a batter moved up and down the order has one career average describing several different jobs.

Balls per boundary and balls per dismissal

Two frequency measures that are more stable over small samples than the ratios built from them. Balls per boundary describes scoring pattern; balls per dismissal is the batting equivalent of a bowling strike rate.

Expected and impact measures

Various providers publish modelled figures that weight runs by the difficulty of the situation in which they were scored, or estimate how much a performance changed the probability of winning. They are the only common measures that account for context, which is precisely what the classic figures throw away. They are also model-dependent, and different providers will disagree about the same innings, so they are best read as an additional perspective rather than as a verdict.

The two companion pieces take the most argued-over entries in this list and go further into them: batting average vs strike rate and bowling economy, average and strike rate. For where these figures appear in practice, see how to read a cricket scorecard, and for the rain-affected terminology, Duckworth-Lewis-Stern explained. You can also browse player records to see the measures side by side.