What Is Cricket? A Beginner’s Guide to the Sport

Cricket is a bat-and-ball team sport in which two sides take turns batting and fielding. The batting side tries to score runs; the fielding side bowls the ball, limits scoring and tries to dismiss batters. Standard matches have 11 players on each team, with two batters on the field at a time. The ECB’s beginner’s guide explains this basic structure.

The aim is to outscore the opposition, but the format matters. In Test cricket, having more runs when time expires does not automatically mean a win: a match can finish as a draw.

How cricket is played

The action centres on a pitch, a strip 22 yards long within the larger playing field. At each end stands a wicket: three upright posts called stumps, topped by two small pieces called bails. A bowler delivers the ball towards the batter at the opposite end, while the other batter waits at the bowler’s end. The captains toss a coin, with the winning captain choosing whether to bat or field first. These terms and arrangements are covered in the ECB guide.

An innings is a team’s turn to bat. When a batter is dismissed, another normally replaces them. With 11 players and two needed to bat together, a side is normally all out after ten dismissals. An innings can also end through an overs limit or, in Test cricket, a captain’s declaration—a decision to stop batting. MCC Law 13 defines how innings end.

Runs: the scoring unit

Batters score one run when both safely exchange ends while the ball is in play. They can repeat this for additional runs. A shot reaching the boundary normally scores four if the ball touches the ground first, or six if it clears the boundary without touching the ground inside the field. See MCC’s laws on scoring runs and boundaries.

Teams also receive extras, such as wides, no-ball penalties, byes and leg-byes. Extras contribute to the team total rather than an individual batter’s runs. Runs hit off a no-ball still count towards the batter’s score, separately from the no-ball penalty. MCC Law 18 sets out these allocations.

Wickets: dismissals as well as equipment

In a score, “wickets” means batters dismissed. Ways to get out include:

• Bowled: a delivery that is not a no-ball breaks the batter’s wicket, potentially after touching their bat or body.
• Caught: a delivery that is not a no-ball touches the bat and a fielder completes a fair catch before the ball touches the ground.
• Leg before wicket (LBW): the batter’s body intercepts a ball that would have hit the wicket, without the ball first touching the bat. The delivery must not be a no-ball, and rules about where it pitches and strikes the batter also apply.
• Run out: a fielder breaks the wicket while the batter is out of their ground—for example, before they safely reach the other end when attempting a run.

Overs: counting deliveries

An over consists of six valid deliveries. Wides and no-balls do not count towards those six, so an over can require more than six actual deliveries. Bowling switches ends after each over. MCC Law 17 sets out the counting rules.

Test cricket, ODI and T20: what changes?

The ICC identifies three international formats:

• Tests: multi-day matches with up to two innings per side. Men’s Tests normally have a five-day schedule.
• One-Day Internationals (ODIs): one innings per side, normally limited to 50 overs each.
• Twenty20 Internationals (T20Is): one innings per side, normally limited to 20 overs each.

In a Test, a team wins by scoring more runs in aggregate than the opposition scores in its two completed innings. Usually, this means either chasing a target in the final innings or ending the opponent’s final innings short of that target. A team can also win by an innings if its single innings exceeds the opponent’s two combined.

If play ends without a decisive result, the match is drawn—even if one team is well ahead. A tie is different: all innings are completed and the aggregate scores are equal. These distinctions follow MCC Law 16.

Reading the score and the statistics

A score written 150/3 after 24.2 overs means 150 runs, three wickets lost, and 24 complete overs plus two valid balls. The overs figure is not a decimal: 24.2 represents 146 valid deliveries, not 24.2 mathematical overs.

Those counts underpin different statistics. The following examples are hypothetical:

Statistic	What it measures	Calculation
Batting average	Runs per dismissal	200 runs across five innings, with one not-out: 200 ÷ 4 = 50.00
Bowling average	Runs conceded per wicket credited to the bowler	120 runs conceded ÷ 6 wickets = 20.00
Team run rate	Runs scored per six valid balls	150 ÷ (146 ÷ 6) = 6.16 runs per over

The definitions of batting average and bowling average concern dismissals and wickets, not scoring speed. Higher batting averages and lower bowling averages are generally preferable, but neither tells the whole story.

For bowling figures, runs conceded include runs off the bat, wides and no-ball extras, but not byes or leg-byes. Not every team wicket belongs to a bowler: run-outs receive no bowling credit.

For Test comparisons, keep the format fixed and examine opposition, conditions, era and sample size before judging the number. Start with how to calculate batting average for the denominator, or how Test runs are counted for the distinction between team and individual totals.