Cricket Rules and Scoring Explained

It is one of the oldest sports on record, has been played for centuries and is loved by audiences around the world.

Yet the rules of this great game still leave many perplexed so let us offer a helping hand with this quick explanation.

Forms of Cricket

In the international arena there are three main formats - Test matches, one-day internationals and T20s.

Away from the international stage, first-class cricket and one-dayers will be played over a variety of formats, while the latest addition to the English domestic cricket scene is The Hundred which, as it says on the tin, is a 100-balls per side competition.

Test matches

Test matches (once timeless) are now played over a maximum five days with each day's play split into three sessions.

A toss of a coin decides which team of 11 players each wants to bat first with either side allowed two innings.

A team is bowled out when 10 wickets are taken though a team can declare on any score before that eventuality, often if they have scored enough runs or time or weather could be a factor.

A run is scored by a batter running to the other end of the pitch and his partner running the other way.

They can each go back for two runs, again for three runs and so on. Four runs are scored when the ball reaches the boundary ropes; six runs are scored when the ball clears the rope without bouncing first.

Runs can also be acquired via extras, specifically no-balls, wides, byes and leg byes.

Test Cricket Explained: History, rules and format

One-day internationals

At international level, one-day internationals (ODIs) are played, as the name suggests, over one day with a maximum of 50 overs per side.

An innings is over when a team has been bowled out (10 wickets taken) or their 50 overs have expired.

No bowler can bowl more than 10 overs in an ODI which also features three powerplays where the bowling team is subjected to fielding restrictions. Scoring is exactly the same.

ODI Cricket Explained: History, rules and format

T20 internationals

T20 is the newest, fastest and most divisive addition to cricket's international catalogue.

As the name suggests, this is 20-overs-a-side stuff, where an innings is over if a team is bowled out or their 20 overs have expired. The team batting second then has 20 overs to reach its target.

No bowler can bowl more than four overs, again there are powerplays though scoring is the same.

T20 Cricket Explained: History, rules and format

Rules

The aim of cricket - whatever the format - is for one team to score more runs than the other. In any one-day scenario (allowing for weather-enforced adjustments) that makes the highest-scoring team the winner.

In Test cricket and other longer, first-class forms of the game, draws can be an option whereby the team batting last has either failed to reach its target score or failed to lose all 10 wickets before an agreed finishing time.

Batting

Batters (and their teams) score runs by hitting the ball and they and their partner (at the other end of the wicket) successfully swapping places.

If they do that once, it's one run, if they can do it twice the team (and batter who hit the ball) get two runs, and so on.

Batters can run as many times as they like after hitting the ball. They can also score four by hitting the ball to the marked boundary or six by hitting the ball over the marked boundary without it bouncing.

Teams - not batters - can also score 'extras', from either byes (a run without the ball hitting the bat), leg-byes (runs when the ball has come off a part of the body), wides (where the bowler has bowled a delivery too wide or high to hit) or no-balls (where the bowler has stepped beyond the line where he can bowl from).

Bowling

There are nine ways in which a batter can be dismissed, the first five being the most commonplace. They are:

• Bowled - the bowler's delivery hits any part of the wicket behind the batter and dislodges the bails

• Caught - a batter hits a delivery to a fielder without the ball bouncing

• Leg before wicket - the ball hits the batter on any part of his body other than his arm and the umpire feels to ball would have hit the wicket

• Run out - when attempting a run the batter fails to complete it before a fielder throws down the wicket

• Stumped - when the wicketkeeper runs out the batter if the batter misses the ball and is out of his batting ground or 'crease'.

There are other more unusual circumstances in which batters can be dismissed - hit wicket, obstructing the field, timed out and a double hit.