Cricket for Beginners: Test, ODI and T20 Formats and How Scoring Works

Cricket can look complicated at first, but the idea is simple: one team bats and tries to score as many runs as possible, while the other bowls and fields, trying to get the batters out. Then the teams swap.

The three main formats

Format	Length of match	Overs	Innings
Test	Up to five days	No limit	Two per team
One-Day International (ODI)	About one day	50 overs per team	One per team
Twenty20 (T20)	About three hours	20 overs per team	One per team

• Test cricket is the traditional, longest format. Each team has up to two innings, and a team usually needs to bowl out the opposition twice to win.
• ODIs and T20s are limited-overs formats, where each team gets a fixed number of overs to score as many runs as it can. T20 is the fastest and most explosive.

Key terms

• Over: six legal deliveries from one bowler.
• Innings: a team’s turn to bat, ending when ten batters are out or the overs run out. In limited-overs cricket, there is also a time or overs cap.
• Wicket: when a batter is out. Common ways include being bowled (the ball hits the stumps), caught (a fielder catches the ball before it bounces), leg before wicket (LBW), run out and stumped.
• Run: scored when batters run between the wickets, or through boundaries.

How runs are scored

• Batters swap ends and run the length of the pitch: each completed run scores one.
• A ball that reaches the boundary after touching the ground scores four runs.
• A ball that clears the boundary without bouncing scores six runs.
• Extras, such as wides and no-balls, add runs to the batting team’s total.

How the match is decided

• In limited-overs matches, the team that scores more runs wins. The second team to bat wins by chasing down the target, or loses if it falls short or is bowled out.
• Winning margins are reported differently depending on who wins: a team batting first wins “by 20 runs”, while a team chasing wins “by 5 wickets”, meaning it had five wickets still in hand.
• In Test matches, a team wins by scoring more runs in total across both innings and bowling the opposition out twice. If time runs out first, the match is a draw. If scores are level when the match finishes (rare), it is a tie.

A famous rivalry

Test cricket’s oldest contest is The Ashes between England and Australia, played for a small urn and contested since 1882. Other major series and tournaments include the ICC Cricket World Cup in the one-day format and the T20 World Cup.

Watching your first match

Start with a T20 game: it is short, high-scoring and easy to follow. Then work your way up to a Test match, where the slow build of pressure is part of the charm.