How to read a cricket scorecard: every column explained

A cricket scorecard is a compression format. It was designed to fit a full day's play onto a card the size of a postcard, and every convention on it exists because a scorer with a pen and a fixed amount of paper needed to record a complicated event in as few characters as possible. Nothing on the card is decorative. Once you know what each mark is doing, a scorecard reads faster than the commentary that produced it.

Most people learn the card by osmosis and end up with gaps. They know the asterisk means not out but have never worked out why the team total is larger than the sum of the individual scores. They can read 4-0-32-2 but could not say what the second number is. This guide takes the card apart column by column.

The two halves of a card

Every innings on a scorecard has two blocks. The first lists the batting side, one row per batter, in the order they came to the crease. The second lists the bowling side, one row per bowler who sent down at least one delivery, in the order they first bowled. Between them sit the extras line, the total, and the fall of wickets.

A full match card is simply this structure repeated: twice for a limited-overs game, up to four times for a Test or first-class match. The header above each block tells you whose innings it is and, in the second innings of a chase, what the target was.

The batting card

The name column

The batter's name appears with markers attached. Conventions vary between publishers, but the common ones are stable:

• (c) after a name means captain.
• (wk) or a dagger symbol means wicketkeeper.
• An asterisk placed before a name, in a printed team list of the sort a newspaper or almanack uses, also means captain. This is the single most common source of confusion on a card, because an asterisk placed after a score means something entirely different.

The order of the rows is the order in which the batters actually walked out, not a fixed set of roles. If a nightwatchman goes in at the fall of the second wicket, that is where the nightwatchman's row sits. A card shows what happened, not what was planned.

The asterisk

An asterisk against a batter's runs means the batter was not out when the innings ended. It is a statement about how the innings finished, not about quality. A batter who is 63 not out was still at the crease when the overs ran out, when the tenth wicket fell at the other end, or when a declaration was made.

This matters more than it looks. A not-out innings is excluded from the denominator when a batting average is calculated, so the asterisk quietly changes the arithmetic of a career. It is the reason a lower-order batter who is regularly stranded can carry an average that flatters the contribution.

Two related notations are not the same as not out:

• retired hurt or retired not out: the batter left the field injured or ill and may return later in the innings. No wicket falls. If the batter never comes back, the innings is treated as not out for averaging purposes.
• retired out: the batter left without the umpires' permission for reasons other than injury and did not return. This does count as a dismissal, but no bowler is credited.

How out

The dismissal column is the densest shorthand on the card. Read it as a sentence with the words removed.

Written as	Means	Bowler credited
b Jones	Bowled by Jones	Yes
c Smith b Jones	Caught by the fielder Smith, off Jones's bowling	Yes
c & b Jones	Caught by Jones off his own bowling	Yes
c (wk) Smith b Jones	Caught behind by the wicketkeeper	Yes
c sub (Smith) b Jones	Caught by a substitute fielder	Yes
lbw b Jones	Leg before wicket, bowler Jones	Yes
st Smith b Jones	Stumped by the keeper Smith off Jones	Yes
hit wicket b Jones	Batter broke the stumps in playing or setting off	Yes
run out (Smith)	Run out, Smith effected it	No
run out (Smith/Brown)	Run out, two fielders involved	No
obstructing the field	Batter wilfully obstructed a fielder	No
hit the ball twice	Batter struck the ball a second time other than to protect the wicket	No
timed out	Incoming batter was not ready within the permitted time	No
not out	Innings ended with the batter unbeaten	Not applicable

The rule behind the right-hand column is simple. A bowler is credited with a wicket when the dismissal was caused by the delivery: bowled, caught, leg before, stumped, hit wicket. A bowler is not credited when the dismissal was caused by something else, which is why run outs sit on the card with a fielder's name in brackets and no bowler at all.

The order of names in c Smith b Jones is fixed: catcher first, bowler second. It never reverses. If you see a card where the bowler appears to be listed first, you are looking at the bowling block, not the batting block.

One more entry sometimes appears at the bottom of the batting list: absent hurt or absent ill. An absent batter is not a wicket. This is why a team can be all out with only nine wickets recorded, or eight. An innings ends when ten wickets fall or when nobody is left to come in, whichever happens first.

Runs, balls, fours, sixes, strike rate

These five columns are usually headed R, B, 4s, 6s and SR.

R is runs scored off the bat. It does not include runs the batter ran while at the crease that were signalled as byes or leg byes, and it does not include the one-run penalty for a wide or a no ball.

B is balls faced. The counting rule catches people out. A no ball counts as a ball faced, because the batter had a delivery to deal with. A wide does not, because by definition the batter could not reach it. Add up the balls-faced column for a completed innings and you should get the number of legal deliveries bowled plus the number of no balls.

4s and 6s count boundaries hit off the bat. A ball that runs away for four byes does not appear here, and neither does an overthrow that takes a single to five runs.

SR is the batting strike rate, runs divided by balls, multiplied by 100. A strike rate of 140.00 means the batter scored 140 runs per 100 balls faced. In limited-overs cricket this column is often the first thing worth reading. In a Test card it is frequently omitted altogether, because the number that matters there is the balls column on its own.

Did not bat

Below the last batter to appear, the card lists the members of the eleven who never came in. On a card for a completed 50-over innings that ends with wickets in hand, this line is where you find the specialist bowlers. It is a useful sanity check: batters listed plus batters who did not bat should come to eleven, allowing for anyone absent.

Extras, and why the team total is bigger

The extras line is where the difference between a team total and the sum of the batters' scores lives. Extras are runs the fielding side gave away that no batter is credited with.

• b (byes): the ball passed the bat and the keeper without touching either, and the batters ran. Charged to the team total, not to any bowler.
• lb (leg byes): the ball struck the batter's body, not the bat, and the batters ran. Also not charged to the bowler. Leg byes are only allowed if the batter was attempting a shot or trying to avoid the ball.
• w (wides): the delivery was out of the batter's reach as they stood. One run is charged, plus any runs run or any boundary that follows, and the ball is bowled again. Charged to the bowler.
• nb (no balls): an illegal delivery, most often a front-foot overstep, but also a dangerous high full toss or a variety of technical breaches. One run is charged, the ball is bowled again, and in white-ball cricket a free hit usually follows. Charged to the bowler. Runs scored off the bat from a no ball go to the batter and to the bowler's analysis.
• pen (penalty runs): five-run penalties awarded for offences such as the ball striking a fielding helmet placed on the ground, or deliberate damage to the pitch. Charged to nobody's bowling figures.

The dividing line is responsibility. A wide or a no ball is the bowler's error, so the bowler pays for it. A bye is a delivery that beat everybody, and a leg bye came off the batter's pads, so neither is treated as runs the bowler conceded. This distinction is not cosmetic: it is the reason a bowler's runs conceded almost never equals the runs scored while that bowler was operating.

The total line

The total line carries several pieces of information at once. A typical limited-overs version reads:

Total: 278/6 (50 overs, RR 5.56)

The number before the slash is runs, the number after is wickets. In Australian usage the two are reversed, so the same total is written 6/278. Both are common, both are correct in their own tradition, and the only way to be sure is to remember that wickets cannot exceed ten.

In a Test card you will also see:

• (dec) for a declared innings, meaning the captain closed it voluntarily with wickets in hand.
• (all out) or simply a wickets figure of 10.
• (f/o) noting that the side followed on.
• The number of overs bowled and, in longer formats, the number of balls.

The run rate, RR, is runs divided by overs. In a second innings you will also find RRR, the required run rate, which is the runs still needed divided by the overs still available.

Fall of wickets

The fall of wickets line records the state of the innings at each dismissal. The modern format reads:

1-19 (Salako, 5.2 ov), 2-72 (Whitcombe, 20.4 ov)

The first number is the wicket number, the second is the team score when it fell, the name is the batter dismissed, and the over figure is the point in the innings. Older cards and some newspaper formats reverse the first two numbers, giving 19-1, so read the pair in the direction that makes the wickets rise from one to ten.

The over notation counts completed overs and then balls, so 20.4 is the fourth ball of the twenty-first over.

Fall of wickets is the most underrated part of the card. It is the only place where the shape of the innings survives. Two sides can post the same total, but a card reading 1-19, 2-24, 3-31 followed by a long fourth-wicket stand tells a completely different story from one where the wickets fall in a clump at the end. Subtract consecutive figures to reconstruct every partnership.

The bowling card

The bowling block is usually five or seven columns: O, M, R, W, Econ, and often Wd and Nb.

• O: overs bowled. A figure like 9.3 means nine complete overs and three further balls, not nine and three-tenths.
• M: maidens. An over from which no runs are scored off the bat and 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. A maiden in which the bowler also takes a wicket is a wicket maiden, sometimes shown in its own column.
• R: runs conceded. Everything off the bat, plus wides and no balls, plus runs run or boundaries taken from those illegal deliveries. Byes, leg byes and penalty runs are excluded.
• W: wickets credited, using the rule set out above.
• Econ: economy rate, runs conceded per over.

The economy arithmetic has a trap. A bowler with figures of 9.3-0-57-2 has bowled nine and a half overs, not 9.3 of them. The economy rate is 57 divided by 9.5, which is 6.00, not 57 divided by 9.3. Any time a bowling analysis ends in a part-over, convert the balls to sixths before dividing.

Reading 4-0-32-2

Written out in full, a bowling analysis runs overs, maidens, runs, wickets. So 4-0-32-2 is four overs, no maidens, thirty-two runs conceded, two wickets taken. The order never changes.

The confusion comes from the short form. In print and speech, a bowler's return is often given as wickets first: 2 for 32, or 2-32, or in Australian usage 2/32. The same performance therefore appears as 4-0-32-2 in a table and 2-32 in a sentence, with the numbers apparently swapped. The rule of thumb is that the four-number version always starts with overs, and the two-number version almost always starts with wickets. If in doubt, wickets cannot exceed ten and overs in a single limited-overs spell cannot exceed the per-bowler cap.

A worked example

The card below is invented as an illustration. The teams, players and figures are fictional and are not drawn from any real match.

Riverton innings, 50 overs

Batter	How out	R	B	4s	6s	SR
A Whitcombe	c Delaney b Osei	34	68	3	0	50.00
R Salako	b Osei	8	16	1	0	50.00
M Fontaine	lbw b Rahimi	71	94	6	1	75.53
T Okonjo	c & b Rahimi	12	21	1	0	57.14
J Marsden	run out (Delaney)	45	41	3	1	109.76
P Sandhu (c)	not out	63	45	4	3	140.00
K Villiers	st Delaney b Rahimi	9	8	1	0	112.50
D Ferreira	not out	14	9	1	1	155.56

Did not bat: L Kowalski, S Abara, N Petrov

Extras (b 4, lb 7, w 9, nb 2) 22

Total 278/6 (50 overs, RR 5.56)

Fall of wickets: 1-19 (Salako, 5.2 ov), 2-72 (Whitcombe, 20.4 ov), 3-98 (Okonjo, 27.1 ov), 4-171 (Marsden, 38.2 ov), 5-187 (Fontaine, 39.5 ov), 6-223 (Villiers, 45.4 ov)

Kingsmere bowling

Bowler	O	M	R	W	Econ	Wd	Nb
B Osei	10	1	52	2	5.20	2	1
H Rahimi	10	0	48	3	4.80	1	0
C Whitehead	10	0	51	0	5.10	3	1
G Mbeki	9	0	58	0	6.44	2	0
E Larsen	8	0	40	0	5.00	1	0
T Ncube	3	0	18	0	6.00	0	0

The arithmetic that ties it together

Four separate reconciliations should hold on any completed card, and running them on this example shows what each column is really doing.

Runs. The eight batters scored 34, 8, 71, 12, 45, 63, 9 and 14, which comes to 256. Extras add 22. The team total is 278. The gap between the batters' runs and the team total is always exactly the extras, plus any penalty runs.

Wickets. Six batters were dismissed. Five of those wickets went to bowlers: two to Osei, three to Rahimi. The sixth was Marsden's run out, credited to no bowler. This is why the bowlers' wickets column sums to five while the total reads 278 for 6.

Overs. The bowlers sent down 10, 10, 10, 9, 8 and 3 overs, which is 50, matching the innings length. In a 50-over match no bowler may exceed ten, and the card reflects that cap.

Runs conceded. The bowlers conceded 52, 48, 51, 58, 40 and 18, which comes to 267. The team total is 278. The difference of 11 is exactly the byes and leg byes, 4 plus 7, which are charged to the side but to no bowler. The wides and no balls, another 11 runs, sit inside the bowlers' figures rather than outside them.

Balls faced. The batters faced 68, 16, 94, 21, 41, 45, 8 and 9 balls, which is 302. Fifty overs is 300 legal deliveries. The extra two are the two no balls, which count as balls faced. The nine wides do not.

Those five checks are the whole logic of a scorecard. Once they make sense, no column on the card is mysterious.

What a scorecard will not tell you

The card is a record of outcomes, not of causes, and it hides as much as it shows.

It does not record who bowled to whom. A batter's 71 might have come almost entirely against the two least dangerous bowlers on a card, and nothing in the table would reveal it.

It does not record dot balls, false shots, dropped catches or the state of the pitch. A batter who was dropped on nought and went on to a hundred appears identical to one who batted flawlessly.

It does not record the match situation at the moment a batter came in. The number 6 who scored 63 not out in the example above arrived at 171 for 4 in the thirty-eighth over, a comfortable entry point. The same 63 made from 40 for 4 in the twelfth over would be a substantially harder innings, and the card weights them the same.

It does not record when the wickets fell relative to the interval, the second new ball, or a rain break, all of which change the difficulty of scoring.

For that reason, the fall of wickets line and the bowling block are worth as much attention as the batting block. Read them together and the card stops being a list of numbers and becomes a description of an innings: who set it up, who accelerated, which bowler broke the partnership, and how much of the total came from the fielding side's own mistakes.

If you want to go further into what the individual numbers mean once you can find them, the companion pieces on batting average and strike rate and on bowling economy, average and strike rate take the same columns and ask what they are actually measuring. You can also browse player records to see how these figures accumulate across a career.