Scorer

In cricket, a scorer is someone appointed to record all runs scored, all wickets taken and, where appropriate, the number of overs bowled.

This is the job of the umpires on the field of play, who signal to the scorers in cases of ambiguity such as when runs are to be given as extras rather than credited to the batsmen, or when the batsman is to be awarded a boundary 4 or 6.

More sophisticated score books allow for the recording of more detail, and other statistics such as the number of balls faced by each batsman.

Scorers also sometimes produce their own scoring sheets to suit their techniques, and some use coloured pens to highlight events such as wickets, or differentiate the actions of different batsmen or bowlers.

For instance, cricket authorities often require information about matters such as the rate at which teams bowled their overs.

This additional information, however, does not form part of the critical role of a scorer, which is to keep track of the score of the game.

The ECB make free software available for cricket scoring both on PC and mobile devices from the PlayCricket website.

Another early method of recording the number of balls faced and runs scored by each batsman off each bowler was devised by Australian scorer J.G.

Sometimes charts (known as wagon wheels) are prepared showing to which part of the field each scoring shot by a batsman was made (revealing the batman's favourite places to hit the ball)[3] Technology such as Hawk-Eye allows for more detailed analysis of a bowler's performance.

For instance the beehive chart shows where a bowler's balls arrived at a batsman (high, low, wide, on the off stump etc.

The conventional notation for a single bye is a triangle with a horizontal edge at the base and a point at the top.

Other than the information kept on a detailed scorecard, there are specific conventions for how the in-progress and overall result of a match is summarised and stated.

The margin of victory can be described in four ways: Some examples of full statements of scores in two-innings matches include: The statement of score and results is similar in a limited overs match, except that for a victory by wickets, it is also conventional to append the number of balls remaining in the team's innings – since the number of overs is often a greater constraint than remaining wickets.

If the overs or targets are amended by a rain rule (typically the Duckworth-Lewis method), this is always noted in the statement of result – which is important since the official margin of a victory by runs under a rain rule may not equal the difference between the teams' actual scores.

As for a two-innings match, if a tied match is decided by a tie-breaker, the score will still reflect the primary result as a tie and the tie-breaker as an appendix to the result; this is even in the case of a Super Over, the runs from which are not added to the main innings score.