Skip to content

Cricket Rules for Beginners: Innings, Overs, Runs and Wickets

Cricket from scratch under the 2026 Laws: 11-player sides, the 22-yard pitch, six-ball overs, runs and boundaries, how wickets fall and who wins.

By Published 3 min read

Reign Creative LLC makes Cricket Sport Career Simulator, which this article links to, so we have a commercial interest in it. How we write and check articles.

AI-assisted article. Drafted with AI tools from the sources cited below and checked by automated tests and an AI editorial review. No person has reviewed it yet. How we write and check articles.

Key takeaways

  • Two teams of 11 take turns to bat and bowl; each turn is an innings, and the side with more runs wins.
  • Play happens on a 22-yard pitch with a wicket of three stumps and two bails at each end.
  • Bowlers deliver overs of six legal balls, and no bowler may bowl two overs in a row.
  • Batters score by running between the wickets or by hitting boundaries worth four or six.
  • An innings ends when ten batters are out, the overs run out, or the captain declares; the match can be a win, a tie or, when it is not decided in any other way, a draw.

Cricket can look impenetrable from the outside: matches that last five days, scores like 287 for 6, and a vocabulary of overs, wickets and maidens. Underneath, the idea is simple. One team bats and tries to score runs; the other bowls and fields and tries to get the batters out. Then they swap. This guide follows the Laws of Cricket, written by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), in their 2026 edition, which took effect on 1 October 2026.

The teams and the innings

Law 1 says a match is played between two sides of 11 players, one of whom is the captain. Each side's turn to bat is an innings. Law 13 allows a match of one or two innings per side, and the sides bat in turn.

Batting side Fielding side
On the field Two batters All 11 players
Aim Score runs without losing wickets Take wickets and stop runs
Key role The striker faces the ball; the non-striker waits at the other end One bowler bowls; one player keeps wicket; nine field

The pitch and the wickets

The action happens on the pitch, which Law 6 defines as a rectangle 22 yards (20.12 m) long and 10 ft (3.05 m) wide, in the middle of a much larger field. At each end stands a wicket: three stumps topped by two bails, 28 in (71.12 cm) high and 9 in (22.86 cm) wide under Law 8. Painted lines called creases mark where batters are safe and where bowlers must deliver from.

Overs: how bowling works

The bowler delivers the ball from one end towards the batter at the other. Law 17 groups deliveries into overs of six balls. Two details matter:

  • Only legal balls count. A wide or a no ball does not count as one of the six, so it must be bowled again.
  • No bowler bowls two overs in a row. After each over, the ends switch and a different bowler takes over. A bowler can bowl again from the next over but one.

In limited-overs cricket, each bowler also has a ceiling: the ICC's playing conditions cap a bowler at 10 overs in a one-day international and four in a T20 international.

Scoring runs

Batters score in two main ways:

  1. Running. After hitting the ball, the two batters run to swap ends. Each completed swap is one run.
  2. Boundaries. Law 19 awards four runs if the ball crosses the boundary after touching the ground, and six if it clears the boundary without bouncing.

Runs can also come from extras that the fielding side gives away, such as a one-run penalty for every wide or no ball. How cricket scoring works covers every way to score, with a worked over.

Getting out

A batter who is dismissed is "out", and the fielding side has taken a wicket. The most common ways are being bowled, caught, leg before wicket, run out and stumped; the Laws list more. Ways to get out in cricket explains each.

Because batters bat in pairs, an innings is over when the tenth batter is out: the side is all out. Law 13 also ends an innings when the agreed overs are used up, or when the captain declares or forfeits it.

Winning, tying and drawing

Law 16 sets out the results:

Result When it happens
Win by runs The side fielding last wins: the other side's innings ends without passing its total
Win by wickets The side batting last passes the target; the margin is the wickets it still had in hand
Tie All innings are completed and the scores are exactly equal
Draw The match ends without being won, tied, conceded or awarded, for example when time runs out

A team that scores 250 and dismisses its opponent for 220 wins by 30 runs. A team chasing 251 that reaches 252 for 6 wins by 4 wickets, because four of its ten wickets were still to fall.

Formats

The same Laws underpin very different games. A Test match gives each side two innings over up to five days; a one-day international gives each side one innings of up to 50 overs; a T20 gives each side 20. Test versus ODI versus T20 compares them, and cricket player roles and fielding positions explain who does what.

Following one player through these situations is the idea behind Cricket Sport Career Simulator, one of our sports career games: you create a cricketer, develop batting, bowling and fielding skills, and make the key decisions in each match.

Good to know

Frequently asked questions

How many players are in a cricket team?
Eleven. Law 1 of the Laws of Cricket says a match is played between two sides, each of 11 players, one of whom is captain, although a match can be agreed between sides of other sizes. Only one side bats at a time, with two of its batters on the field.
How many balls are in an over?
Six legal deliveries. Wides and no balls do not count towards the six, so an over can contain more than six deliveries. After each over, play switches ends and a different bowler takes over.
Why does an innings end at ten wickets, not eleven?
Because batters bat in pairs. When the tenth batter is out, only one remains and there is no partner, so the side is all out. Law 13 also ends an innings when the agreed overs run out, or when the captain declares or forfeits.
Can a cricket match end with no winner?
Yes, two ways. A tie is when all innings are completed and the scores are equal. A draw, under Law 16, is any match not decided as a win, a tie, or a match conceded or awarded, as when time runs out in a Test before either side can win.

Sources

  1. The Laws of Cricket, 2017 Code, 4th Edition (2026) (opens in a new tab)Marylebone Cricket Club — accessed
  2. ICC Men's ODI Playing Conditions, October 2026 (opens in a new tab)International Cricket Council — accessed

League, team and athlete names appear here only to identify the rules, records and history being discussed. Reign Creative LLC's sports games are not affiliated with, endorsed by or licensed by any league, team, players' association or athlete, and all names and marks belong to their owners.

About the author

— The independent app studio that builds the apps covered on this site and publishes every article here. On Google Play it publishes as Reign Collective Apps.

We use AI tools to help research, draft and edit our articles. Each article lists the sources its factual claims rely on, and details about our apps come from their live Google Play listings. No article on this site has been reviewed by an independent expert unless the reviewer is named on it.

No person at Reign Creative LLC has read this article in full. It was published after automated checks and an AI editorial review, which are described in our editorial policy and are not the same as a person reading every sentence.

Spotted an error? Tell us — how corrections are handled is set out in our editorial policy.

Keep reading