Free Cricket scoreboard

Why score Cricket with ScoreZen

• ✓One-tap scoring, built for Cricket
• ✓Share the live score by QR code or link
• ✓Free for spectators — no app to install to watch
• ✓Keeps working if the connection drops
• ✓34 sports, tournaments and standings included

How Cricket scoring works

Runs are scored when both batters swap positions by running between the wickets; each completed exchange is worth 1 run. A ball struck to the boundary scores 4 runs (along the ground) or 6 runs (in the air without bouncing). Extra runs (extras) are awarded to the batting side for certain bowling faults such as a wide or a no-ball. A team's score is shown as runs scored and wickets lost (e.g. 250/4).

Match format

The format sets the length: a Test can last up to 5 days with two innings per side; an ODI is 50 overs per side; a T20 is 20 overs. Many club or amateur formats also exist (limited overs or timed). Always confirm the format before playing, as the number of overs and side rules depend on it.

How to win

The team with the higher total of runs wins the match. If the totals finish exactly level with the innings completed, the result is a tie; some competitions use a Super Over to decide it. In Tests, a match not finished in the allotted time is a draw, whatever the scores.

Recommended ScoreZen setup

In ScoreZen, set up cricket using points scoring to track each team's runs; use the Official preset for a set-overs format (T20, ODI) and the Casual preset for a simplified club game. Set the target or number of innings according to the chosen format.

The two accounts a cricket scorer has to balance

Cricket is the rare sport where you keep two records of the same innings and both have to come out right: the batting record, every run credited to the striker who made it, and the bowling analysis, overs, maidens, runs, wickets. Runs off the bat plus extras must equal the total.

Extras are where the two pull apart, because not every extra is charged to the bowler. A wide and a no ball are the bowler's doing and land on the analysis; byes and leg byes only go into the team's extras. That is why an over containing four byes can still be a maiden, while one wide destroys it.

Wickets split the same way. Bowled, caught, lbw, stumped and hit wicket are credited to the bowler; run out, obstructing the field, hit the ball twice, timed out and retired out are not. Write the fall of wicket in the moment: score, wicket number, which batter went.

Settle one thing before the first ball. Most of the cricketing world reads a score as runs then wickets, 148 for 6, while Australia reads it 6 for 148. On a shared board, say which way it reads, or someone will read 6/148 as a collapse.

What the Laws actually say about extras and the result

A wide is worth one run, and under Law 22 everything that follows, runs completed or a boundary, is scored as wides too, not as byes. A no ball also carries one run under Law 21, but it splits: runs off the bat go to the striker, the rest as byes or leg byes. Neither counts among the six balls of the over (Law 17).

Leg byes are not automatic. Law 23 allows them only if the umpire is satisfied the striker tried to play the ball with the bat, or tried to avoid being hit. Otherwise dead ball is called and the runs vanish.

Overthrows catch club scorers out: when the ball reaches the boundary from a fielder's throw, the batting side gets the Law 19 allowance plus the runs completed, plus the run in progress if the batters had crossed at the instant of the throw. Law 18 covers the reverse, a batter short of their ground losing that run; Law 28 adds five penalty runs when a fielder stops the ball with a cap.

Two Laws are addressed to you. Law 3 requires scorers to acknowledge each umpire signal separately, and to agree the runs, the wickets and the overs with the umpires at least at every interval other than drinks and at the end of the match. Law 16 makes the umpires responsible for the correctness of the scores, and once they have agreed the final figures the result cannot be changed. (MCC, The Laws of Cricket, 2017 Code, 3rd edition 2022: Laws 3, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23 and 28. A fourth edition takes effect on 1 October 2026 and rewrites Law 19.8 on overthrows.)

Junior, club, international: one book, different games

Junior cricket rewrites the job. Many age-group competitions play pairs: batters bat in fixed pairs for a set number of overs, and a dismissal costs the pair an agreed number of runs instead of ending their innings. A standard scorebook column is not built to hold a minus.

Club cricket splits in two. Limited-overs games cap how many overs any one bowler may send down, and the league sets that cap, not the Laws. Timed cricket keeps the follow-on: in a two-innings match, Law 14 puts the lead at 200 runs over five days or more, 150 over three or four, 100 over two and 75 in a one-day match.

International limited overs adds the ICC playing conditions. Two semi-circles of 30 yards (27.43 m), centred on the middle stump at each end and joined by two straight lines, mark the fielding restrictions: in a men's ODI, two fielders outside them for overs 1 to 10, four from over 11 to 40, five in the last ten, ten overs maximum per bowler. A men's T20I has a six-over powerplay with two fielders outside, then five outside, four overs per bowler.

Rain and the clock change results without a ball being scored. A shortened chase normally needs twenty overs in an ODI and five in a T20I before Duckworth-Lewis-Stern can give a result, and the revised target comes from that calculation, not from the scorer. Those same conditions turn every no ball into a free hit, on which the striker cannot be out bowled, caught, lbw, stumped or hit wicket; the Laws on their own provide no free hit.

What ScoreZen changes for cricket

ScoreZen is the scoreboard, not the scorebook. The book stays on the table with its two records and its balance. On the phone you get the buttons an innings needs: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6, plus 5 for penalty runs, and two innings. The run total is the score on screen; the wickets sit beside it as their own counter, 6 of 10, and stop the innings at ten.

Then you share the match with a link, or a QR code on the pavilion door. The away side's families and the injured player follow from wherever they are, free, unlimited, without an account. TV mode fills a screen in the clubhouse, and the transparent overlay drops the live score into OBS. On an outground with one bar of signal, ScoreZen keeps counting and resyncs when the network comes back.

For a festival or a league it runs knockout with an optional third-place match, home-and-away championship, pools then a final bracket, Swiss system, best-of-three and best-of-five series, and rotating teams. A cricket table allows draws and so does ScoreZen: two points a win, one a draw, then run difference. One QR code covers the whole tournament, and every player opens that same code to find their own fixture.

Afterwards the replay and the vertical story are made to be shared. The club site can embed the widget, fixtures export to CSV, the calendar feed carries the season, and the public read-only API serves your pages without a key. The A4 sheet prints an innings-by-innings summary. Twenty-five languages. Three trial matches are free for life; after that, one payment of €1.99unlocks it for life.

Frequently asked questions