15 Basic Rules of Cricket Every Fan Should Know

A new viewer dropped into a Test match could watch for twenty minutes and still not know why the fielders just erupted in celebration over a ball that missed the bat entirely. Cricket rewards patience with its rules the same way it rewards patience at the crease. Once the basics click, the appeals, the field placements, and the stoppages all start to make sense. Here are the 15 rules that get you there.

1. Two teams, 11 players each

Each side has 11 players. The toss decides which team bats or fields first.

2. The objective

The batting team scores as many runs as possible. The fielding team tries to dismiss all 10 batting wickets (one batter always has no partner left to bat with, which ends the innings).

3. An innings

Each team gets one innings (T20, ODI) or up to two innings (Test cricket). An innings ends when 10 wickets fall, the overs run out, or the captain declares.

4. How runs are scored

• Running between the wickets: 1 run per completed run
• Ball reaches the boundary after bouncing: 4 runs
• Ball clears the boundary without bouncing: 6 runs
• Extras (wides, no-balls, byes, leg-byes) also add to the total

5. The wicket

A wicket is three stumps with two bails balanced on top. Dislodging the bails dismisses the batter, unless they’re grounded behind the crease in time.

6. The crease

Batters need bat or body grounded behind the popping crease to be “in.” Crossing the crease at the wrong moment leads to run outs or stumpings.

7. Overs

An over is six legal deliveries bowled by one bowler from one end. A different bowler takes over from the opposite end after each over.

8. The no-ball

A no-ball gets called for a range of infractions: overstepping the crease, a waist-high full-toss, and others. The batting side gets one extra run, the delivery must be re-bowled, and the batter can’t be caught or bowled out off it.

9. The wide

A wide is a delivery the umpire judges too far from the batter to hit in a normal stance. One extra run is awarded and the delivery is re-bowled.

10. The 10 ways to be dismissed

Dismissal	How it happens
Bowled	Ball hits and dislodges the stumps
Caught	Fielder catches ball before it bounces
LBW	Ball would have hit stumps but hits batter’s body first
Run out	Batter fails to reach crease before fielder breaks the wicket
Stumped	Wicketkeeper removes bails while batter is out of the crease
Hit wicket	Batter dislodges their own stumps
Obstructing the field	Batter deliberately blocks a fielder
Hit the ball twice	Batter deliberately strikes the ball a second time
Handled the ball	(Merged into obstructing the field)
Timed out	New batter takes too long to arrive at the crease

11. LBW in detail

Leg Before Wicket causes more arguments than any other law in the book. The ball must not pitch outside leg stump, it must hit the batter’s body, and the umpire has to judge that it would have gone on to hit the stumps. If the impact is outside off stump, the batter can still be given out, but only if they offered no shot.

12. The fielding restrictions (powerplays)

In limited-overs cricket, fielding restrictions apply during powerplay overs, capping how many fielders can stand outside a set ring. This gives the batting side room to attack early in the innings.

13. The follow-on

In Test cricket, if the team batting second finishes well short of the first team’s total, the leading side can enforce the follow-on and send the trailing side straight back out to bat again.

14. Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) method

In rain-affected limited-overs matches, DLS resets the target using a formula that accounts for overs lost, so a shortened match still has a fair result.

15. Fair and unfair play

Bowlers can’t scuff or alter the ball illegally. Batters can’t obstruct the field on purpose. Umpires can impose five-run penalties for breaches of fair play.