How to Read Cricket Scores: A Complete Beginner's Guide

Glance at a TV graphic that reads “312/7” and you can tell a lot about a match without knowing another thing: how many runs are on the board, how many batters are gone, and roughly how much batting is left. That’s the whole trick to cricket scores. Learn the notation and a dozen abbreviations, and any scorecard stops looking like code.

The Core Notation: Runs/Wickets

Cricket shows scores in the format R/W, where:

• R = total runs scored by the batting team so far
• W = number of batters dismissed (wickets fallen)

A team fields 11 players, and an innings ends once 10 wickets fall (the 11th batter has no partner left to bat with). A score of 10/0 means 10 runs, nobody out yet. A score of 300/10 means the innings is finished, all out for 300.

Some regions flip the order to W/R, so you’ll occasionally see 7/312 instead of 312/7, particularly in parts of South Asia. Context usually makes it obvious which number is which.

Reading a Live Score

When you see a live score like this:

England 187/4 (38.2 ov)

It means:

• England has scored 187 runs
• They have lost 4 wickets
• They have faced 38.2 overs (38 complete overs plus 2 balls of the 39th)

Format Differences

Format	Innings	Overs per side	Max duration
Test match	2 per team	Unlimited	5 days
One Day International (ODI)	1 per team	50	~8 hours
T20	1 per team	20	~3 hours

In Test cricket, a team trailing by a large margin after the first innings can be forced to follow on and bat again immediately. When that happens, the score gets shown across both innings combined.

Reading a Scorecard

A full scorecard has two halves: batting and bowling.

Batting Scorecard

Batter	Dismissal	Bowler	Runs	Balls	4s	6s	SR
A. Smith	c sub b Jones	Jones	74	98	8	1	75.5
B. Kumar	b Ahmed	Ahmed	3	9	0	0	33.3
C. Ali	not out	—	51	60	4	2	85.0

• c sub b Jones = caught by the substitute fielder, bowled (credited) to Jones
• b Ahmed = bowled by Ahmed
• not out = still batting when the innings ended
• SR = strike rate (runs per 100 balls faced)

Common Dismissal Abbreviations

Abbreviation	Meaning
b	Bowled
c	Caught
lbw	Leg before wicket
run out	Run out
st	Stumped
hit wicket	Hit wicket
DNB	Did not bat
ret hurt	Retired hurt

Bowling Scorecard

Bowler	O	M	R	W	Econ
Jones	10	2	42	3	4.20
Ahmed	8	0	55	1	6.87

• O = overs bowled
• M = maiden overs (overs where no runs were scored)
• R = runs conceded
• W = wickets taken
• Econ = economy rate (runs per over)

Multi-Innings Scores in Tests

In a Test, you may see something like:

Australia 1st innings: 456 | England 1st innings: 281 | Australia 2nd innings: 203/5 declared

That “declared” means Australia’s captain closed the second innings voluntarily at 203 for 5, rather than batting on, to leave enough time to bowl England out.

Target and Required Run Rate

In limited-overs cricket, you’ll often see a target alongside the required run rate (RRR):

Target: 287 | Required: 68 off 42 balls | RRR: 9.71

Here, the chasing team needs 68 more runs from 42 balls, which works out to nearly 10 runs an over.