If you've ever watched a cricket match and thought "wait, why is that out?" or "since when is THAT a rule?" — this guide is for you. Cricket's rules aren't actually that scary once someone explains them in plain English. That's what we're doing here: all 42 Laws, explained like a friend would, plus the big October 2026 update that changed several of them.
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What Are the Laws of Cricket?
Every sport needs a rulebook, and cricket's is called the Laws of Cricket — written and maintained by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), based at Lord's in London. The MCC has been the custodian of the Laws since 1787, which makes this one of the oldest continuously maintained rulebooks in all of sport.
The current framework is the 2017 Code, and it contains 42 Laws covering everything: the players, the equipment, how runs are scored, and every single way a batter can get out. They open with something no other sport bothers to write down — a Preamble on the Spirit of Cricket, the idea that the game should be played hard but fairly, with respect for opponents, umpires, and the game itself.
One thing worth knowing upfront: the Laws are the foundation, but professional matches add another layer on top called playing conditions (we'll get to those later). The Laws themselves apply everywhere from village greens to World Cup finals.
What's New — October 2026 Amendments
Here's the part most guides haven't caught up with yet. On 1 October 2026, the MCC brought 73 amendments into effect — the biggest shake-up of the Laws in years. If you're reading a rules guide written before this date, parts of it are already out of date. Here are the changes that actually matter:
Bunny-Hop Catches Banned
You know those spectacular boundary catches where a fielder leaps from outside the rope, bats the ball back into play mid-air, lands outside, jumps again, and somehow completes the catch? That was the "bunny-hop" — legal under the old Laws, but it never sat right with most fans. Now it's gone. A fielder who has gone outside the boundary may touch the ball while airborne only once, and must then land wholly inside the boundary for the catch to count. Land outside after touching it, and it's a boundary. This applies to relay catches between two fielders as well.
Last Over Completed
Previously, if a wicket fell on the final ball of a day's play, that was it — stumps, everyone goes home. Now the final over of the day must be completed even if a wicket falls during it. The incoming batter walks out and faces the remaining deliveries (assuming conditions stay fit for play). It sounds small, but it closes a loophole that used to rob spectators — and batters — of legitimate cricket.
Laminated Bats Allowed
For the first time, laminated bats (officially "Type D" bats, made from up to three pieces of wood glued together) are permitted in adult cricket. They'd been junior-only since 2017. The MCC's reasoning is refreshingly practical: good willow is getting expensive, and laminated bats let manufacturers use lower-grade wood behind a quality face. Crucially, testing showed no performance advantage — this is about cost, not bigger sixes.
Ball Sizes Renamed
The old gender-and-age-based ball categories are gone. Balls are now simply Size 1, Size 2, and Size 3, with uniform margins defining three distinct categories. The traditional men's ball (Size 1) hasn't physically changed — this is about consistency and clarity across men's, women's, and junior cricket.
Deliberate Short Runs Punished
Deliberate short-running — where a batter intentionally doesn't make their ground to keep a favoured batter on strike — now carries real teeth: a five-run penalty to the fielding side, and the fielding captain gets to choose which batter faces the next ball. This is now one of only three situations in the Laws where players (rather than the scorebook) decide who's on strike.
Hit Wicket, Overthrow and Dead Ball Refined
A few technical clean-ups worth knowing:
· Hit wicket: "receiving the ball" now lasts until the batter has regained their balance after playing the shot. Lose your balance mid-shot, stumble a few steps, and crash into the stumps — you're out, even if the ball is long gone. (Being shoved into the stumps by a fielder still doesn't count.)
· Overthrow: finally has a proper definition. An overthrow is a genuine attempt to hit the stumps — to stop runs or effect a run out. A wild throw to a teammate or a misfield near the boundary is just a misfield, not an overthrow.
· Dead ball: umpires now have more discretion. The ball no longer has to be in the bowler's or keeper's hands to be "finally settled" — if it's held by any fielder or simply comes to rest, the umpire can call it dead.
Two smaller tweaks round out the update: a wicketkeeper creeping slightly in front of the stumps during the run-up is no longer an automatic no-ball (as long as they're fully behind at the moment of release), and a delivery passing above head height is now called a wide rather than a no-ball.
The 42 Laws Explained
Now the full tour. The Laws run in a logical order — players and setup first, then the match itself, then scoring, then every way to get out. We'll take them in groups.
Players & Officials (Laws 1–3)
Law 1 — The Players. Eleven players per side, one of whom is the captain. That's the headline; the fine print allows fewer in casual games, but never more than eleven fielders on the field at once. The captain is responsible for making sure the side plays within the Laws and the Spirit of Cricket.
Law 2 — The Umpires. Two umpires stand in the middle and apply the Laws — they're the final judges of fair play, and their decisions on matters of fact can't be argued with. Higher-level matches add a third umpire (TV replays) and a match referee, but the two on-field umpires remain the heart of officiating.
Law 3 — The Scorers. Two scorers keep the official record, working from the umpires' signals. Everything they record — runs, wickets, extras — becomes the match's official history. When the scorers and umpires disagree, the umpires' version wins.
Equipment & Ground (Laws 4–10)
Law 4 — The Ball. Covers the ball's weight, size, and condition — and this is where the new Size 1/2/3 categories live. It also governs when a ball can be replaced (lost, damaged, or out of shape) and the eternal controversy of ball maintenance: polishing is fine, picking at the seam is not.
Law 5 — The Bat. Maximum dimensions (38 inches long, 4.25 inches wide), what it's made of — and now, the newly permitted laminated Type D bats. The blade must be wood (with the laminated exception), and the handle has strict limits on what materials can stiffen it.
Law 6 — The Pitch. The famous 22 yards (20.12 metres) of turf between the two sets of stumps. The Law defines its width (10 feet) and condition, and gives umpires the power to rule a pitch dangerous or unfit — which can stop a match.
Law 7 — The Creases. The painted lines that run the game: the popping crease (the batter's safe line, 4 feet in front of the bowling crease), the bowling crease (through the stumps), and the return creases (which box the bowler in). Most dismissals and no-balls are decided by inches around these lines.
Law 8 — The Wickets. Two wickets, one at each end, each with three stumps and two bails, standing 28 inches high. The Law covers their exact dimensions and what happens when wind — rather than the ball — knocks a bail off (the umpire can replace it and play continues).
Law 9 — Preparation and Maintenance of the Playing Area. The unglamorous but vital stuff: mowing, rolling, watering, and repairing the square. It sets out who's responsible for the ground (usually the home side) and what maintenance is allowed once the match has started — which is deliberately very little.
Law 10 — Covering the Pitch. When rain threatens, who decides to bring the covers on, and when must they come off? The Law balances protecting the pitch against the game's need to keep moving. In professional cricket, playing conditions usually spell out the specifics.
Match Structure (Laws 11–16)
Law 11 — Intervals. Lunch, tea, and drinks breaks — when they're taken and how long they last. The classic rhythm (lunch after two hours, tea after another two) comes from here, though limited-overs formats compress it.
Law 12 — Start of Play; Cessation of Play. When each day's play begins and ends, including the new rule that the last over must be completed even if a wicket falls. It also covers what happens when light, rain, or dangerous conditions stop play.
Law 13 — Innings. Each side's turn to bat. An innings ends when ten batters are out, the captain declares, or the allotted overs run out. The Law also handles the order of innings and what happens when time runs short.
Law 14 — The Follow-on. Test cricket's great tactical weapon. If the side batting first leads by enough — 200 runs in a five-day match (150 in three-day, 100 in two-day, 75 in one-day) — the captain can force the opposition to bat again immediately instead of batting themselves. Enforce it and you can win by an innings; get it wrong and you hand the game away.
Law 15 — Declaration and Forfeiture. The batting captain can declare the innings closed at any time to try to force a result, or even forfeit an innings entirely. It's the mechanism behind cricket's most thrilling finishes — and its most infamous miscalculations.
Law 16 — The Result. How a match is won, lost, drawn, or tied. Win by runs, win by wickets, win by an innings — or the peculiar glory of the tie (scores exactly level, which is different from a draw). If time runs out before a result, it's a draw, no matter how close things got.
Scoring Runs (Laws 17–23)
Law 17 — The Over. Six legal deliveries make an over, bowled from one end, alternating ends each over. A bowler can't bowl two overs in a row, and if they get injured mid-over, a teammate finishes it. Wides and no-balls don't count toward the six.
Law 18 — Scoring Runs. The heart of batting: batters run between the wickets, and each completed run counts — unless a run is "short" (a batter fails to make their ground). This is also where the new deliberate short run penalty lives: five penalty runs and the fielding captain picks the striker.
Law 19 — Boundaries. Four runs if the ball reaches the rope, six if it clears it on the full. The fielder-touch rules matter here: a fielder in contact with the boundary (or the ground beyond it) while touching the ball concedes the boundary. And remember the October 2026 change — the airborne-touch-then-land-inside rule for catches near the rope.
Law 20 — Dead Ball. When the ball is "dead," nothing that happens counts — no runs, no dismissals. It becomes dead in obvious moments (a boundary is scored, a batter is out) and trickier ones (a serious injury, the ball lodging in equipment). The 2026 update gives umpires more room to call it dead when the ball is simply settled, wherever it is.
Law 21 — No Ball. The bowler's front foot must land behind the popping crease — overstep, and it's a no-ball: one run to the batting side plus whatever they score off the delivery. Throwing (an illegal bowling action) is also a no-ball. In limited-overs cricket, playing conditions add the free hit, but that's not in the Laws themselves.
Law 22 — Wide Ball. A delivery the batter can't reasonably reach from a normal stance. One run penalty, and the ball doesn't count in the over. Since October 2026, anything above head height is a wide rather than a no-ball — aligning the Laws with how the professional game already called it.
Law 23 — Bye and Leg Bye. Runs scored without the bat touching the ball. Byes pass the keeper untouched; leg byes deflect off the batter's body (as long as they were trying to play a shot or avoid the ball — no shot offered, no leg byes). Neither counts against the bowler, and leg byes are the only "extras" credited to the team's total without punishing anyone.
Fielders, Wicketkeeper & Appeals (Laws 24–31)
Law 24 — Fielder's Absence; Substitutes. If a player leaves the field, a substitute may field in their place — but the sub can't bat, bowl, or keep wicket. (Concussion substitutes, who can bat and bowl, come from playing conditions, not this Law.) A player who's been off the field must wait before bowling again.
Law 25 — Batter's Innings; Runners. Covers how an innings progresses, including retiring hurt. Note: the old "runner" for an injured batter was abolished in 2017 — if you can't run, you retire and (maybe) return later. No more teammates sprinting for you.
Law 26 — Practice on the Field. Once the match starts, practice is tightly restricted — no bowling or batting practice on the pitch or the square. Fielders can warm up away from the playing area, but anything that might alter the pitch's condition is off limits.
Law 27 — The Wicket-keeper. The only fielder allowed gloves and pads. They must stay behind the stumps until the ball is bowled (or hits bat/person) — though the 2026 tweak means being marginally in front during the run-up isn't an automatic no-ball if they're fully behind at release. They also can't take the ball in front of the stumps for a stumping.
Law 28 — The Fielder. What fielders may and may not do: no significant movement as the bowler runs in, no distracting the batter with noise or motion, protective helmets allowed (and the ball hitting a helmet worn on the field scores penalty runs). Deliberate obstruction by a fielder is penalised.
Law 29 — The Wicket Is Broken. Defines the exact moment a wicket counts as "put down" — the stumps must be broken by the ball, the fielder's hand/arm holding the ball, or the batter's own body or bat. If a bail has already fallen, pulling a stump out of the ground counts. Precision matters because run outs and stumpings live or die on this definition.
Law 30 — Batter Out of Their Ground. A batter is "out of their ground" when no part of their body or bat is behind the popping crease. This Law underpins run outs and stumpings — and the endless debates about batters backing up too far at the non-striker's end.
Law 31 — Appeals. Nothing happens without an appeal. The fielding side must ask — traditionally with a rousing cry of "Howzat!" — before the umpire can give anyone out. No appeal, no dismissal, even if the batter is plumb LBW in front of all three stumps. Appeals must come before the bowler starts the next run-up.
The 9 Ways to Get Out (Laws 32–40)
This is the section everyone secretly wants. A batter can be dismissed in nine ways (Laws 32–40). Yes, nine — not ten or eleven, whatever the trivia quizzes say. "Handled the ball" used to be a tenth, but it was folded into obstructing the field back in 2017.
Law 32 — Bowled. The classic. The bowler delivers a fair ball and it hits the stumps, dislodging a bail. Doesn't matter if it took a deflection off bat or pad on the way — if the ball hit the stumps and the bails came off, the batter is bowled.
Law 33 — Caught. The batter hits the ball and a fielder catches it before it bounces. The catch must be clean — full control, no juggling it into the stands. Catches off no-balls don't count (though the batter can still be run out). And near the boundary, the October 2026 airborne-touch rule now decides the spectacular ones.
Law 34 — Hit the Ball Twice. Striking the ball a second time is out — unless the second hit is purely to guard the wicket. So that instinctive second swat to stop the ball rolling onto the stumps? Perfectly legal. Anything else? Walking back.
Law 35 — Hit Wicket. The batter breaks their own wicket with bat or body while receiving the ball or setting off for a run. The 2026 refinement extended "receiving the ball" until the batter regains balance — stumble after the shot and fall onto the stumps, and you're out even if the ball is in the keeper's gloves.
Law 36 — Leg Before Wicket (LBW). The most argued-about dismissal in cricket. In plain terms: if the ball would have hit the stumps but the batter's body (usually the leg) got in the way first, they're out — provided the ball pitched in line (or outside off), hit in line with the stumps, and the batter wasn't offering a shot outside off... it's genuinely complicated, which is why it gets its own DRS reviews. The one-line version: don't let your pads do your bat's job.
Law 37 — Obstructing the Field. Deliberately getting in a fielder's way — blocking a throw, or swatting the ball away with your hand (the old "handled the ball" offence, merged here in 2017). Accidental obstruction doesn't count; it has to be wilful.
Law 38 — Run Out. Either batter is out if the fielding side breaks the wicket while they're short of their ground during a run. The great leveller — it punishes bad calling, slow turning, and backing up too far alike. Run outs can happen off no-balls too.
Law 39 — Stumped. The wicketkeeper's speciality: the batter steps out of their crease to play the ball, misses it, and the keeper whips the bails off before they get back. Only the keeper can do it, only off a fair delivery (not a no-ball), and the batter must be out of their ground.
Law 40 — Timed Out. The rarest dismissal in professional cricket — until Angelo Mathews made it famous at the 2023 World Cup. After a wicket falls, the incoming batter must be ready to face within 3 minutes under the MCC Laws — though ICC playing conditions tighten this to 2 minutes in internationals, which is the limit that caught Mathews. Fail, and they're out without facing a ball. It's only ever happened once in international cricket, which tells you how unusual it is.
Fair Play & Conduct (Laws 41–42)
Law 41 — Unfair Play. Cricket's catch-all for the dark arts: ball tampering (changing the ball's condition illegally), time-wasting, distracting the opposition, dangerous or unfair bowling, and bowlers running on the protected area of the pitch. Penalties range from warnings to five-run penalties to suspension of the bowler. This is the Law that governs the game's biggest scandals.
Law 42 — Players' Conduct. Added in 2017, this is cricket's disciplinary code: four levels of offence, from dissent (Level 1) to threatening an umpire or physical assault (Level 4). Umpires can award penalty runs, and serious offences get reported to the match referee. It's the reason international players can't just scream at umpires anymore — well, not without consequences.
ICC Playing Conditions — How Internationals Differ
Here's the layer most fans mix up with the Laws. The 42 Laws are the universal foundation, but international cricket (and most professional leagues) plays under ICC playing conditions — extra rules bolted on top for each format. The big ones:
· DLS method — when rain interrupts a limited-overs match, the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern calculation resets the target. It's pure maths, and we've built a DLS calculator on cricvic.com so you can run the numbers yourself.
· Powerplays — fielding restrictions in ODIs and T20s that don't exist in the Laws.
· Concussion substitutes — a like-for-like replacement who can bat and bowl, going beyond what Law 24 allows.
· Free hits, DRS, over-rate penalties — all playing-condition extras.
Think of it this way: the Laws are the constitution; playing conditions are the local bylaws. If you're ever confused about why something happened in an international that seems to contradict a Law, check the playing conditions first.
New to some of the terminology here? Our cricket glossary explains 100 terms — from "silly mid-off" to "Bosie" — in the same plain English.
FAQs
How many Laws of Cricket are there?
42, numbered Law 1 to Law 42, plus a Preamble on the Spirit of Cricket. They've been 42 since the 2000 Code reorganised them, and the count survived the 2017 rewrite.
Who makes the Laws of Cricket?
The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), based at Lord's in London. They've been the custodians since 1787 — the ICC runs international cricket, but even the ICC plays under MCC's Laws (plus its own playing conditions).
Do the Laws change often?
Not the structure — but the details get regular tune-ups. The last major Code was 2017, with significant amendments in 2022 and a big batch of 73 amendments effective 1 October 2026 (bunny-hop catches banned, laminated bats allowed, and more — covered above).
What's the difference between the Laws and playing conditions?
The Laws are universal and written by the MCC. Playing conditions are set by the ICC (or a league/board) for specific formats and tournaments — things like powerplays, DRS, and the DLS method. Playing conditions can add to the Laws but never contradict their fundamentals.
What was the bunny-hop catch?
A boundary catch where a fielder jumped from outside the rope, touched the ball mid-air, landed outside, and jumped again — sometimes multiple times — to complete the catch without conceding six. Legal under the old Laws, banned from October 2026: now it's one airborne touch outside the boundary, then you must land inside it.
How many ways can a batter be out?
Nine: bowled, caught, hit the ball twice, hit wicket, LBW, obstructing the field, run out, stumped, and timed out (Laws 32–40). "Handled the ball" was a tenth until 2017, when it was merged into obstructing the field.