How to score cricket in a scorebook: the ball-by-ball method, a worked over and balancing the book

Every ball goes in three places

A scorebook records each delivery three times: in the bowler's analysis, on the batting side, and on the cumulative tally of the team total. New Zealand Cricket's beginners' guide, Cricket Scoring: Getting Started (2023), puts it as a routine: "always record runs in THREE PLACES", in the same sequence after every ball, such as "2 to the batsman, 2 on the bowler analysis, 2 off the team score". Doing it in the same order every time is what stops a run going into two places and not the third when the game speeds up.

Where each kind of run goes is set by Law 18.10 of the Laws of Cricket, 2017 Code 4th Edition (2026), in force since 1 October 2026: runs off the bat go to the striker; otherwise they are byes, leg byes, no-ball extras, wides or penalty runs; and the bowler is debited with runs off the bat, no-ball extras and wides.

The symbols are New Zealand Cricket's; scorebooks differ in the detail and a printed key wins. What they mean, and the abbreviations a finished card uses, are in the guide to scorecard symbols and abbreviations. The no-ball with byes is the line most beginners' material gets wrong, for a reason set out below.

Before the first ball

The Laws ask for two scorers to record "all runs scored, all wickets taken and, where appropriate, the number of overs bowled" (Law 3.1), and for the scorers to check frequently that their records agree (Law 3.2). In practice one scorer comes from each side and they sit together. Before play, the 2023 NZ guide's checklist comes down to:

1. Find a seat with a view of the whole ground, and tell the umpires where it is.
2. Get each team's batting order and write it in a notebook first, not in the scorebook; orders change. Note who won the toss and what they chose.
3. Fill in the headings: the teams, the date, the umpires, the scorers, which innings.
4. Agree how you will acknowledge signals. Law 3.3 says scorers "shall immediately acknowledge each separate signal"; a raised hand or a white cloth is enough, as long as the umpires know which.
5. At the first ball, write the two opening batters and the bowler in their places, and acknowledge the umpire's signal to start.

Scoring one ball, and who is on strike next

The order for one delivery never changes: watch the ball, wait for the umpire's signals, acknowledge each one, then write. An umpire may give two signals for one ball, such as no-ball and then four, and both are acknowledged before anything is written (2023 NZ guide).

Then decide who faces the next ball, because every later entry depends on it. The scorer works out the striker from the runs and the Laws, not from where the players happen to stand:

The caught rule is recent. Until 2022, batters who had crossed before a catch was completed stayed crossed; from 1 October 2022 "when a batter is out Caught, the new batter shall come in at the end the striker was at", to face the next ball unless it is the end of an over (MCC, 1 October 2022). New Zealand Cricket's The Scorer's Companion (2016) still tells scorers to underline the symbol when "the striker is dismissed caught having crossed"; under today's Laws that cannot change who faces.

A worked over, ball by ball

Over 9 of an innings. The score is 40 for 1, Ali is on strike on 22, Brown is on 9, and Smith comes on with figures of 1 for 14 from three overs. Nine deliveries follow, six of them valid.

The wide on delivery 3 and the no-balls on 5 and 7 are not balls of the over (Law 17.3), which is why the umpire calls "over" after delivery 9, the sixth valid ball (Law 17.4). Each is still written in the over box. The leg bye on delivery 6 goes in the over box as L1 so the over reads ball by ball, but Smith is not charged with it. On delivery 7 the umpire signals no-ball and then bye: under Law 21.15 the one-run penalty is a no-ball extra charged to Smith, and the run the batters completed is a bye, not charged.

Checking the over

Three totals have to agree before the next over starts:

• Off the over: 13. The tally went from 40 to 53.
• Charged to Smith: 11. Runs off the bat 1 + 4 + 2 = 7, the wide and its run 2, the two no-ball penalties 2. The leg bye and the bye make up the other 2.
• Batting side: 13. Ali's 7 runs plus 6 extras: wides 2, no-balls 2, leg byes 1, byes 1.

Smith's cumulative figures, written at the foot of the over box, go from 1-14 to 2-25, and the team total in the other corner is 53. The 2016 Companion has one scorer call it aloud at the end of every over, "5 runs off the over, Southee has 1 for 10, team total 27 for 2", so a slip is found within six balls, not at the end of the innings. The 2023 guide adds a check of every batter's score after each five overs.

A maiden is an over with no runs charged to the bowler, written M across the over; byes and leg byes do not spoil it, and an incomplete over at the end of an innings is never one (Companion). Smith's over is not a maiden: 11 runs were charged to him.

Wickets and the fall of wickets

For a wicket, the bowler's box gets X or W, and the batting side gets the batter's final score, how they were out and, if the bowler is credited, the bowler's name. The bowler is credited with bowled, caught, LBW, stumped and hit wicket (2023 NZ guide). A run out is not to the bowler: write R in the over box with a small numeral for the runs completed first, such as R1, because "the batting side shall also score any runs completed before the wicket was fairly broken" (Law 18.8.2). In the batting section write "run out" with the fielder's name in brackets.

Then the fall of wickets line, which every scorebook has: the wicket number, the team score, the batter out, and the not-out batter with their score at that moment. Ali's dismissal in the worked over reads:

If a dismissal is unclear, such as who took a catch, the 2023 guide's advice is not to make a fuss and to check with the umpires at the next break. The method of dismissal and the score at the fall can be finished in pencil and completed then.

Balancing the book at the end of the innings

The book balances when three numbers agree: the batting total, the bowling total and the last number crossed off the tally. The batting total is every batter's runs plus all the extras. The bowling total is every bowler's runs conceded plus byes, leg byes and penalty runs; wides and no-balls are already inside the bowlers' runs and are not added again (2023 NZ guide).

Take a 20-over innings of 133 all out.

Two more checks catch what the totals cannot:

• Wickets. The bowlers took 2 + 1 + 3 + 1 + 2 = 9; the tenth was a run out, which no bowler is credited with. The batting section must show ten dismissals in all.
• Balls. Twenty overs of six valid balls is 120, and the Companion has scorers check that overs times six, plus balls in a part over, plus the number of no-balls equals the balls faced by all the batters, because a no-ball is a ball faced and a wide is not. Under the current Laws the no-ball figure in the extras line is exactly the number of no-balls, one run each, since any other runs off a no-ball are the batter's or byes: here 120 + 5 = 125 balls faced.

When the book does not balance

The size of the difference usually says where to look. These are the patterns to try first; each comes from a run written in two places and not the third:

The end-of-over check is what keeps this table short: a difference found at the end of over 9 is in nine deliveries, one found at the end of the innings is anywhere. Once both books balance, the Laws require the scorers to agree the runs, wickets and overs with the umpires "at least at every interval, other than drinks intervals, and at the conclusion of the match" (Law 3.2).

Mistakes the beginners' guides repeat

The pages that rank for this question are association and club handouts, most written for the Laws of their day. Read against the 2026 edition of the Laws:

The no-ball with byes is the subject of its own section in the guide to cricket scorecard abbreviations, including why the older practice survives: both ways give the same team total, so nothing fails to balance. What changes is the bowler's figures and the breakdown of the extras.

Penalty runs, the end of the match and electronic scoring

Five penalty runs, awarded for offences such as the ball hitting a fielder's helmet left on the ground, are not tied to a ball or a bowler. They go in the penalty box of the extras line and on the tally; when they are awarded to the fielding side, the 2023 NZ guide adds them to that side's previous innings if it has batted, or to its next one if not. Some playing conditions let only qualified umpires award them, not player umpires.

The match ends the moment the winning run is scored, however it comes. The Companion gives the cases that trip scorers: with the scores level, a single completed before the ball reaches the boundary scores 1, not the boundary; two to win off a no-ball on which the batters complete one run, only the no-ball and the single count. Record the time the winning run was scored or the last wicket fell.

Many competitions now score electronically, on PlayHQ in Australia and New Zealand or Play-Cricket in England and Wales. The 2023 NZ guide still teaches paper first, and the paper method is what makes sense of an app's ball-by-ball screen: the same three places, filled in by the app.

What this guide does not cover

This guide covers scoring a match by hand under the Laws of Cricket. Competitions vary the Laws in their playing conditions: free hits, overs per bowler, retirement rules in junior cricket and whether penalty runs apply. Where a competition's conditions say otherwise, they win; where they are silent, the Law applies. It does not cover recording batting times and partnership minutes, which the NZ guides set out, or rain-affected targets.

Simple Online Counter is a free, browser-based set of counters that keeps its counts in your browser's own storage. Its cricket score counter keeps runs, wickets and overs with each extra on its own key, does not count wides or no-balls as balls of the over, and works out the run rate from overs notation, as its section on why 18.3 overs is not 18.3 explains. It is a check beside the book, not a replacement for it. For what to do with the finished figures, see cricket averages and strike rates.