Hitting the Ball Twice in Cricket: Law 34 Explained

A batter jams his bat down to keep the ball off his stumps, then instinctively taps it away toward the covers for a single. That second tap is where Law 34 gets involved. Hit the ball twice for any reason other than protecting your wicket, and the umpire can send you back to the pavilion. Most players never see it called in an entire career, which is exactly why it trips people up when it does happen.

When a second hit is legal

Law 34 allows one legitimate reason to strike the ball twice: stopping it from rolling onto your stumps. After playing or missing a delivery, if the ball is trickling back toward the wicket, the batter can use the bat, or any part of the body under the hand-on-bat rules, to knock it clear.

That’s it. The intent has to be defensive. A batter who clears the ball away from the stumps is following the Laws and faces no penalty for it.

When it’s a dismissal

The batter is out “hit the ball twice” if he wilfully strikes the ball a second time for any reason other than protecting the wicket, most commonly to flick it away for a run. It goes down as a batter dismissal, not against the bowler’s figures.

The first contact still has to be a genuine stroke. And there’s a carve-out: a batter isn’t out under this Law if the second contact is simply returning the ball to a fielder, as long as the fielding side has agreed to it.

Can you score runs?

Almost never. Runs don’t count off a deliberate second strike, even when that second strike was a legal defensive one. The Law exists specifically to remove any reason to play the ball twice.

The exception sits with the boundary or the fielders: if runs come from an overthrow, or from something a fielder does after a lawful second strike, those runs can stand. Outside those cases, the ball is dead for scoring purposes the moment it’s struck twice.

Scenario	Legal?	Outcome
Hits ball a second time to stop it hitting stumps	Yes	No dismissal, no runs
Hits ball a second time to push it away for a run	No	Out “hit the ball twice”
Second contact to return ball to fielder (with consent)	Yes	Not out, play continues
Runs from an overthrow after a lawful second strike	Yes	Those runs may stand

How common is it

Rare enough to sit next to “obstructing the field” and “timed out” on the list of dismissals nobody expects to see. Umpires generally give batters the benefit of the doubt on wicket protection, so most disputed cases never even reach the point of a decision. At the professional level, a genuine “hit the ball twice” dismissal is a story you tell for years, not something you scroll past in a highlights reel.