What Is a Powerplay in Cricket? Rules Explained

Watch the first over of any T20 innings and you’ll notice the boundary looks strangely empty. That’s the powerplay at work: a fixed block at the start of a limited-overs innings where the fielding side can only put a couple of fielders outside the 30-yard circle. Captains hate bowling in it, batters live for it.

The important thing to know before anything else is that the powerplay is not one rule. The overs differ by format, and the ICC has changed how they are calculated as recently as 2025. Test cricket has no circle restrictions at all.

What the 30-yard circle actually is

It is not a circle. The marking is two semicircles of 30 yards (27.43 m) radius, each drawn from the centre of a set of stumps, joined by two lines parallel to the pitch. Everything in the sections below is counted against that shape.

ODI powerplay rules

A 50-over innings splits into three fielding phases, fixed since the ICC scrapped the optional batting and bowling powerplays in 2015:

Phase	Overs	Fielders allowed outside the 30-yard circle
Powerplay 1 (mandatory)	1–10	2
Powerplay 2 (middle overs)	11–40	4
Powerplay 3 (final overs)	41–50	5

For those first 10 overs only two fielders can guard the deep, so openers who fancy their chances usually go after the bowling while the boundary is thin. Note that the 2015 rewrite also removed the old requirement to keep two fielders in catching positions during the first 10 overs — captains now have a free hand inside the circle.

T20 and T20I powerplay rules

A 20-over innings gets one powerplay, covering the first 6 overs:

Phase	Overs	Fielders allowed outside the circle
Powerplay	1–6	2
Rest of innings	7–20	5

Domestic leagues including the IPL and the Big Bash use the same six overs.

What changed in 2025

Until recently, a rain-shortened T20 innings had its powerplay rounded up to a whole over, which handed the batting side a larger share of the innings under restrictions than intended. From 2 July 2025 the ICC calculates it to the nearest ball instead, keeping the powerplay near 30% of the innings:

Innings length	Powerplay
5 overs	1.3 overs
6 overs	1.5 overs
7 overs	2.1 overs
8 overs	2.2 overs
9 overs	2.4 overs
10 overs	3 overs
16 overs	4.5 overs

The system had already been used in England’s T20 Blast for several years before the ICC adopted it.

The penalty for getting it wrong

Step a fielder outside the circle by mistake and the delivery is called a no-ball, which adds a run and an extra ball. In ODIs and T20Is — where every no-ball has carried a free hit since 2015 — it also hands the batting side a free hit next delivery. On that free hit the batter cannot be bowled, caught, lbw, stumped or out hit wicket, though a run-out is still live.

There is a second, less obvious way the restrictions bite. Under ICC playing conditions a fielding side that falls behind the required over rate has to bring an extra fielder inside the circle for however many overs it is short. The ICC introduced that in T20Is in January 2022 and extended it to ODIs from 2023. A side that is two overs behind at the death defends the last two overs with four fielders out rather than five, which is often worth more to the batting team than the powerplay itself.

Restrictions that apply all the time

Two limits are not powerplay rules at all and apply in every format, Tests included: no more than five fielders on the leg side at the instant of delivery, and no more than two of those behind square on the leg side. Breaching either is a no-ball. They exist to stop a bowler packing the leg side and bowling short at the body, a response to the negative leg-theory bowling that followed the 1932-33 Bodyline series.

Why the powerplay matters

With only two fielders patrolling the deep, batters aim for gaps that simply are not there later in the innings, while captains try to squeeze out early wickets without leaking too many runs. That trade-off is the whole point of the phase: a side that banks quick runs and keeps wickets in hand carries a real advantage into the middle overs, and a side that loses two or three early usually spends the rest of the innings recovering.

Powerplay in The Hundred and other formats

The idea has spread well beyond ODIs and T20s. In The Hundred, the 100-ball format, each innings opens with a powerplay of the first 25 balls, during which only two fielders may sit outside the circle. A handful of competitions have trialled variations such as movable or split powerplays. The core principle does not change: a fixed early window where the field is pushed up and the batting side is expected to attack.

Powerplay conditions are set by ICC playing conditions rather than the MCC Laws, and the ICC revises them most years — the T20I calculation method changed in July 2025 and the ODI over-rate penalty in 2023. Figures here were checked against the current ICC playing conditions in July 2026; domestic leagues can and do apply their own variations.