A scorecard is a complete account of a cricket match compressed into two tables. Once you can read it, you can reconstruct the shape of a game you never saw: where it turned, who held it together, which bowler broke it open. Once you cannot, it is a wall of abbreviations.
This is what each part of it means. Every match record in our archive uses the same layout, so it is worth ten minutes.
The batting block
One row per batter, in the order they came to the crease. Four things sit on each row: how they got out, how many they scored, how many balls they faced, and their boundary count.
The dismissal column is the dense part. The common ones:
- b Bowler, bowled. The ball hit the stumps.
- c Fielder b Bowler, caught. The fielder took it, the bowler gets the wicket.
- lbw b Bowler, leg before wicket. The ball would have hit the stumps and the batter's body stopped it.
- run out (Fielder), and no bowler is credited. It is not their wicket.
- st Keeper b Bowler, stumped. The batter left the crease, the wicketkeeper removed the bails.
- not out, still batting when the innings ended.
- c & b Bowler, where the bowler caught it off their own bowling.
Two you will see less often but should recognise: hit wicket, where the batter knocked their own stumps over in the act of playing, and retired hurt, which is not a dismissal at all, because the batter left injured and may return.
Balls faced is the number that turns a score into information. Forty off thirty is an innings that pushed the game along. Forty off a hundred and ten, in a Test match, may have been the innings that saved it. The score alone will not tell you which you are looking at.
Extras
Runs the batting side scored without a batter hitting the ball. They count toward the total and are listed separately:
- b (byes), where the ball beat everyone and the batters ran.
- lb (leg byes), where it came off the batter's body rather than the bat.
- w (wides), meaning out of reach. One run, plus the ball is bowled again.
- nb (no-balls), an illegal delivery. One run, bowled again, and in limited-overs cricket the next ball is usually a free hit.
A large extras column is worth noticing. Twenty-five extras in a total of two hundred is a side that gave away more than a tenth of the runs through discipline rather than through good batting.
The total
Written differently depending on where you are. Most of the cricket world writes 245/6, meaning 245 runs for the loss of 6 wickets. Australia inverts it: 6/245. The numbers mean the same thing, and both appear in historical records, so read the larger one as runs.
245 all out means ten wickets fell and the innings ended. 245 declared means the batting captain chose to end it, which only happens in cricket played over multiple days.
The bowling block
Four figures per bowler, always in the same order: overs, maidens, runs, wickets.
- Overs, six legal deliveries each. A figure like 8.3 means eight complete overs and three balls of a ninth.
- Maidens, overs from which no run was scored off the bat.
- Runs, conceded.
- Wickets, taken.
Bowling figures are quoted wickets first: 5 for 32, or 5/32, is five wickets for thirty-two runs. The economy rate, runs per over, is the number that matters most in the shorter formats; in Test cricket, maidens and wickets matter more.
Fall of wickets
A line at the foot of the batting block reading something like 1-14, 2-19, 3-97, 4-102. Each pair is the wicket number and the team score when it fell.
This is the most under-read part of a scorecard and often the most revealing. Those four figures describe a side two down for nineteen, rescued by a partnership of seventy-eight, and then losing a second wicket almost immediately. A collapse, a recovery and a wobble, in fourteen characters. The batting block tells you who scored; the fall of wickets tells you when.
Putting it together
Read a scorecard in this order and it resolves quickly: the total first, then the fall of wickets to find the shape of the innings, then the top scorers to see who built it, then the bowling figures to see who took it apart.
Our archive stores full ball-by-ball scorecards for a large share of the matches it covers. If you want to practise on something, a Test match gives you the most to read: four innings, declarations, and the slow accumulation that the format is built around.
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