Live Cricket Scores & Today's Fixtures

The three formats, and why the scorecard changes

Cricket is played in three main formats, and the same scoreline means very different things in each. A side on 200/4 is comfortable in a Test match, roughly par in a one-day innings, and outstanding in a T20.

Test cricket

Up to five days, two innings per side, no limit on overs. Draws are possible and common — a team that cannot win will often bat to run the clock down. Follow the lead or deficit rather than the raw score.

One-Day Internationals and List A

50 overs per side, one innings each. Ten wickets and 300 balls to spend. The middle overs — roughly 11 to 40 — usually decide the game, because that is where a side either builds a platform or loses the wickets that cap its total.

Twenty20 and T10

20 overs (or 10) per side. Powerplay fielding restrictions early, then a scramble at the death. Run rate matters more than wickets in hand; a side eight down chasing at eight an over is often still favourite.

The score line

A score written as "164/6 (15.4)" means 164 runs scored, 6 wickets lost, after 15 overs and 4 legal deliveries. An over is six legal balls; wides and no-balls do not count towards the six, which is why an over can cost far more than six deliveries of effort.

Australian and older scorecards invert the first two numbers and write 6/164. CrikIQ uses the runs-first convention throughout, including on club fixtures scored in the app.

• Run rate — runs divided by overs faced. The headline measure of how fast an innings is moving.
• Required run rate — for the chasing side, runs still needed divided by overs still available.
• Partnership — runs added since the last wicket fell, shown for the two batters currently in.
• Extras — runs conceded without a batter hitting the ball: byes, leg byes, wides, and no-balls.

The batting columns

R

Runs scored by that batter in the innings.

B

Balls faced. Runs against balls faced is the honest measure of an innings — 40 off 30 and 40 off 70 are different innings entirely.

4s / 6s

Boundaries hit. A useful shorthand for how much of a score came in single blows rather than running.

SR

Strike rate: runs per 100 balls faced. A strike rate of 150 means 1.5 runs per delivery.

The dismissal text beside each name tells you how the wicket fell — "c Smith b Jones" means caught by Smith off the bowling of Jones. "not out" means the batter was still in when the innings ended. A batter listed as "did not bat" never came to the crease.

The bowling columns

O

Overs bowled. A figure like 3.4 means three complete overs plus four deliveries.

M

Maidens: complete overs from which no runs were scored off the bat or as extras.

R

Runs conceded, including wides and no-balls charged to that bowler.

W

Wickets taken. Run-outs are not credited to the bowler.

Econ

Economy rate: runs conceded per over. In limited-overs cricket this is usually the number that decides whether a spell was any good.

Rain, reduced overs, and DLS

When rain shortens a limited-overs match, the target is recalculated using the Duckworth–Lewis–Stern method. DLS treats a batting side's two resources — overs remaining and wickets in hand — as a single pool, and adjusts the target in proportion to the resources each side actually had.

This is why a side chasing 200 can be set a revised target of 148 from 30 overs rather than a simple pro-rata 150: losing overs mid-innings costs a well-set side more than it costs a side that has already lost wickets. Scorecards show a revised target as "target" rather than the original total, and a result decided this way is recorded as won by DLS method.

Club matches scored on CrikIQ can apply a reduced-overs target manually, and the scorebook keeps the original and revised figures in the audit trail so a disputed result can be reconstructed afterwards.

Match states you will see on the listing

• Upcoming — scheduled, with a start time shown in your local timezone.
• Live / in progress — the scorecard updates as the match is scored.
• Innings break — first innings complete, second not yet started.
• Stumps — end of a day's play in a multi-day match, with play resuming the next day.
• Completed — a result has been recorded.
• Abandoned / no result — play was not possible, or not enough overs were bowled to constitute a match.
• Tie — scores level with the batting side all out or overs exhausted. Distinct from a draw, which only exists in multi-day cricket.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a tie and a draw?

A tie means both sides finished on exactly the same score with the match completed. A draw means the match ran out of time before a result could be reached, which is only possible in multi-day formats such as Test cricket.

Why does a bowler's over show 3.4 rather than 3.67?

Overs are counted in balls, not decimals. 3.4 means three completed overs and four legal deliveries of a fourth. The number after the point never exceeds 5.

How quickly do live scores update?

Professional fixtures come from licensed data feeds and refresh continuously while a match is in progress. Club matches update as the scorer records each delivery in the CrikIQ scorebook, so they are effectively ball-by-ball live.