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Batter facing a yorker during a super over with the bowler in mid-delivery and the wicket-keeper standing up to the stumps

Super Over Explained

14.07.2026 • Uncategorised

Six Balls, Two Wickets, One Trophy I was in a pub in Bristol in July 2019, watching the Cricket World Cup final on a screen with about forty other people who suddenly cared more about cricket than they ever had in their lives. When the match tied after 50 overs each, half the room thought […]

T20 match in progress during the powerplay with most fielders inside the thirty-yard circle and a batter playing a lofted drive

Powerplay Rules Explained

10.07.2026 • Uncategorised

What a Powerplay Changes Inside the 30-Yard Circle I remember watching my first T20 Blast game with a friend who had grown up on football. About four overs in he leaned over and asked why all the fielders seemed to be standing on top of the batter. Then a batter cleared the rope over a […]

Detailed printed cricket scorecard from a county match showing batter and bowler entries with abbreviations visible across the page

Cricket Scorecard Glossary

10.07.2026 • Uncategorised

Why Scorecards Are Built from Shorthand I once handed a county scorecard to a friend who had spent the previous summer watching baseball in the US and asked her to make sense of it. She gave it a careful look, then handed it back and said it looked like the page of a chess game […]

Electronic scoreboard at a T20 cricket ground showing the live run rate and required run rate during a tight floodlit chase

Run Rate Explained

10.07.2026 • Uncategorised

The Single Number That Drives a Run Chase Years ago I watched a friend who had never seen cricket before sit down to a tight T20 chase. Within ten minutes she had stopped asking what wickets meant and was asking the only question that mattered: are we ahead or behind? The number on the screen […]

Seam bowler in delivery stride at a Test match with the wicket-keeper crouched behind the stumps and the batter defending

Maiden Over Explained

07.07.2026 • Uncategorised

The Six-Ball Sequence That Changes a Bowler’s Day I once watched a county opening bowler take three wickets for ninety runs across a Saturday afternoon and walk off looking flat. The next morning he bowled a single maiden over to start the day’s play and came off the field grinning. The wickets were the headline […]

Big screen at an English Test ground displaying the Hawk-Eye graphic with the wicket zone highlighted during an LBW review

Umpire’s Call Explained

07.07.2026 • Uncategorised

The One Outcome That Frustrates Both Sides The first time I saw a near-identical pair of LBW decisions go opposite ways in the same Test innings, the bloke I was watching with — a season-ticket holder at Headingley for thirty years — turned to me and said the rule was either brilliant or broken, depending […]

Wicket-keeper appealing for a caught-behind decision with the slip cordon raising their arms in unison during a Test match

UltraEdge and Snicko

07.07.2026 • Uncategorised

The Three Tools That Sit Between Bat and Caught-Behind I once sat in a press box during a Test at Lord’s where the third umpire took nearly three minutes to rule on a single edge. The audio spike was clear. The visual was inconclusive. Hot-Spot showed nothing. The verdict came down to interpretation of two […]

Broadcast Hawk-Eye camera mounted on a gantry overlooking the playing area at an English Test cricket ground

Hawk-Eye in Cricket

03.07.2026

What Hawk-Eye Is Actually Measuring I once spent an afternoon watching a Hawk-Eye operator work behind the scenes at a county ground, and the thing that surprised me most was how mundane the screens looked. No glowing red trails, no dramatic graphics. Just rows of camera feeds and a software interface that resembled an air […]

Rain-affected English county cricket ground with the covers being pulled across the square while the electronic scoreboard shows a revised DLS target

DLS Method Explained

03.07.2026

What the DLS Method Actually Does to a Run Chase The first time I saw a rain delay revise a target downward and watched the chasing team still look gutted, I knew the DLS Method needed better translation for the average viewer. The chasing side had been ten runs ahead on the run rate. The […]

Cricket captain making the T-sign with both hands to signal a DRS review request to the on-field umpire during a Test match at an English ground

Cricket DRS Reviews

03.07.2026

Why DRS Exists and What Problem It Was Meant to Solve The first time I watched a DRS review live at a county ground, the bloke next to me leaned across and asked what the T-shape with the hands meant. I told him, and he nodded — then asked why we needed it at all. […]

English county cricket ground in summer with empty pavilion and rolled square ready for a new match

UK Cricket Calendar

03.07.2026

Mapping Six Months of UK Cricket onto a Single Calendar The first cricket season I tried to follow ball by ball was 2017, and within three weeks I’d given up on a paper diary and moved to a colour-coded spreadsheet that’s still on my hard drive nine years later. The reason: the UK cricket calendar […]

UK cricket broadcast camera gantry positioned above a Test match ground with multiple lenses

UK Cricket Broadcasting

03.07.2026

Following the Money Behind UK Cricket Coverage I once tried to calculate how much it would cost a single household to watch every ball of an English cricket summer — every Test, every ODI, every T20I, every Hundred match, every County Championship game with live coverage. The answer, including the necessary streaming subscriptions, came to […]

DRS review in progress on stadium big screen with ball tracking projection at a Test match

Cricket Technology Guide

03.07.2026

Why Numbers, Not Just Replays, Drive Modern Officiating The first time I watched a DRS review unfold at a Test ground, I was at Lord’s in 2018, and what struck me wasn’t the replay — it was the silence. Twenty-seven thousand people watching a giant screen wait for a percentage probability to be calculated. The […]

Cricket pitch from an elevated vantage with stumps at both ends and field markings

Cricket Formats Compared

03.07.2026

Four Codes, One Sport: Why Cricket Has Multiple Formats A friend who’d never watched cricket asked me last August why the same broadcaster was showing two completely different-looking matches on consecutive evenings: one game finished in three hours, the next was still going after four days. The difference between The Hundred and a Test wasn’t […]

Live cricket scorecard on broadcast graphic with batting figures, bowling card and run rate

Cricket Scorecard Guide

03.07.2026

What a Live Scorecard Is Actually Telling You The first scorecard I ever properly walked someone through was on a county ground in 2017. The man next to me kept asking what “127/3 (38.4)” meant. He was a football supporter dragged along by a colleague, and once I started annotating the screen for him he […]