How to Read a Cricket Scorecard: Batting, Bowling and FoW

The four parts of a scorecard

Every innings on a scorecard has the same building blocks, whether it comes from a Test match or your Sunday game. There is the batting card, listing each batter and how they got out. Under it are the extras line and the total. Then comes the fall of wickets, showing the score when each wicket fell. Finally there is the bowling card, with one line per bowler.

These parts are not independent. They check each other. A scorer who knows how they fit together can find a mistake in seconds, which is far more useful than just being able to read the numbers.

The example used throughout this guide is a 20-over local match in which the batting side made 168/7.

The batting card

Each row shows a batter's name, how they were out, runs (R), balls faced (B), fours, sixes and strike rate (SR). Strike rate is runs per 100 balls, so a batter with 42 off 30 has a strike rate of 140.0. Balls faced include no-balls but not wides, which is why a batter's ball count can be lower than you expect if the bowling was wayward.

The dismissal column uses short notation. "b" means bowled by, and the bowler named after "b" gets the wicket. "c" names the catcher. A dagger or the letters wk often mark the wicketkeeper. Run outs name the fielder in brackets and give no bowler at all, because the bowler is not credited.

Batters who did not bat are listed underneath, often under "Did not bat" or "Yet to bat". A batter shown as "not out" was still batting when the innings ended, and their score is often marked with an asterisk, such as 54*.

The extras line and the total

Below the batters comes the extras line, usually written like this: Extras (b 2, lb 4, w 6, nb 1) 13. That means 2 byes, 4 leg byes, 6 wides and 1 no-ball, for 13 extras in all. Some cards also show penalty runs as p.

Then comes the total, written as runs and wickets with the overs used: 168/7 (20 overs). In Australia the order is sometimes reversed, as 7/168, so check the context. If a side is bowled out, the total shows just the runs, often with "all out".

The first check is the simplest. Add up every batter's runs and add the extras. It must equal the total. If the batters in our example scored 155 between them, 155 plus 13 extras gives 168. If it does not match, a run has been given to the wrong place.

Fall of wickets

The fall of wickets line, often shortened to FoW, lists the team score each time a wicket fell. An entry such as 1-12 (Rahul, 2.3 ov) means the first wicket fell with the score on 12, Rahul was the batter out, and it happened on the third ball of the third over.

FoW tells the story of an innings better than any other line. A sequence like 1-12, 2-15, 3-19 shows a collapse. A gap such as 4-48, 5-131 shows an 83-run partnership for the fifth wicket. You can work out any partnership by subtracting one FoW score from the next.

Bowling figures: what 4-0-28-2 means

Bowling figures are written in a fixed order: overs, maidens, runs, wickets. So 4-0-28-2 means the bowler sent down 4 overs, bowled no maidens, conceded 28 runs and took 2 wickets. Most cards add the economy rate, which is runs per over, and columns for wides and no-balls.

Overs use a special notation. 3.4 overs means 3 complete overs and 4 balls, not three and four-tenths. To get economy for 26 runs off 3.4 overs, convert to balls first: 22 balls is 3.67 overs, and 26 divided by 3.67 is about 7.09 per over. Dividing 26 by 3.4 gives 7.65, which is wrong.

A maiden is an over in which the bowler concedes no runs. Byes and leg byes do not count against the bowler, so an over with four leg byes can still be a maiden. Wides and no-balls do count, so an over with a single wide is not.

Spotting mistakes in your own scorecards

Once a match is over, run the three checks: batters plus extras equals the total; bowlers' runs equal the total minus byes, leg byes and penalty runs; bowlers' wickets plus run outs and other non-bowler dismissals equal the wickets fallen. If all three match, your card is almost certainly right.

When they do not, the cause is usually one of a handful of errors. Cricket Score Counter keeps finished games in match history, so you can open the card the next day, run these checks and see exactly which over the problem is in.

• Byes or leg byes entered as runs off the bat, which inflates both a batter and a bowler.
• A run out credited to the bowler.
• Wides added to the batter's balls faced.
• Economy calculated by dividing by the decimal overs figure.
• Maidens removed because of byes or leg byes.