How to Read a Cricket Scorecard Policy & Terms

Each batter gets a row: their name, how they were dismissed, their runs, and the balls they faced. The dismissal is written in a shorthand worth learning. b Smith means bowled by Smith. c Jones b Smithmeans caught by Jones off Smith's bowling. lbw b Smith is leg before wicket. st Jones b Smith is stumped by the keeper Jones off the spinner Smith. run out (Jones) is a run out, credited to the fielder, not to any bowler. An asterisk next to a score, like 63*, means the batter was not out. A batter listed as did not bat never came to the crease because the innings ended first.

Each bowler's line reads as four numbers: overs, maidens, runs, wickets, often written like 24-6-58-3. That is 24 overs bowled, 6 of them maidens (an over with no runs off the bat), 58 runs conceded, and 3 wickets taken. Divide runs by overs and you get the economy rate, how expensive they were; runs per wicket is their average for the innings. A strike rate, for bowlers, is balls per wicket. The best spells are cheap and penetrative at once: plenty of overs, few runs, several wickets.

Runs the batting side scores without a batter hitting them are grouped as extras. Wides (wd) and no-balls(nb) are the bowler's fault and cost the fielding side a run plus, usually, another ball. Byes (b) are runs taken when the ball beats everyone including the keeper; leg-byes(lb) come off the batter's body, not the bat. Extras count toward the team total but not toward any batter's score.

The fall-of-wickets line shows the team score at which each wicket went down, so you can see whether the innings was a steady accumulation or a collapse: 1-15, 2-18, 3-24 means three wickets fell for almost nothing. The team total is written as runs for wickets, so 237 all out or 237/9 declared. In the longer game a captain can declare, ending the innings voluntarily to give themselves time to bowl the other side out. The result line at the top, like "won by 45 runs" or "won by six wickets", tells you the margin: by runs if the side batting first defended its total, by wickets if the side batting second chased it down.

Every one of these appears on the scorecards in CricArcade's Test archive, which holds every men's Test since 1877. Read a couple with this guide open and the shorthand becomes second nature, then take on an innings yourself in The Follow-On.