Super over rules in cricket: how a tied match is decided

The most useful thing to know about a super over is that almost nobody in the ground has time to think during it. Six balls, two wickets, a five-minute gap to choose from a box of scuffed cricket balls, and a decision about who bowls that will be second-guessed for a decade. The super over rules in cricket are short, but they are unforgiving in a way that ordinary playing conditions are not, because every one of them removes an option rather than adding one.

The short version. If the scores are level after both innings have been completed, each side bats one over of six balls. The team that batted second in the match bats first. Two wickets end the innings, which caps a side at three batters. One bowler delivers the over. The team with more runs wins. If the super over is also tied, another one is played, and another, until somebody wins.

That last clause is newer than most people realise, and it exists because of the way the 2019 men's World Cup final ended. For a decade before that, a tied super over was resolved by counting boundaries. The full text of the rule that did the counting is still available, and reading it is the clearest way to understand why it was removed. We will get to it.

• 6Balls per side
• 2Wickets that end the innings
• 1Bowlers permitted per side
• 5Minutes between the two overs

Structural limits from the ICC playing conditions, not match data.

What actually triggers a super over

Two conditions have to be satisfied, and the second one catches people out.

The first is straightforward: the scores must be equal after both innings have been completed. If a target was revised for rain, the comparison is made against that revised figure, so a tie under the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method counts exactly like a tie in an uninterrupted match. Falling one run short of a revised target is a defeat; matching it is a tie.

The second condition is that there has to be a match to tie in the first place. A result is only possible if both sides had the opportunity to bat for a minimum number of overs, and that minimum is five in a Twenty20 international and twenty in a one-day international. Below the floor the match is a no result, and a no result is not a tie. No super over is played, because there is nothing to break.

The distinction matters more often than it sounds. A rain-shortened chase that ends level looks like a tie on the scoreboard and is one only if the innings reached the required length. Below it, the scoreboard is decoration and the fixture goes down as abandoned.

There is a third case that is not a trigger at all. A drawn Test match is not a tied match, and no format with unlimited overs has any use for a super over. This is a limited-overs mechanism for a limited-overs problem: two sides given identical resources have used them to identical effect, and something has to separate them.

Six balls and two wickets, which is where the three-batter limit comes from

The rule in the current playing conditions is one line long: the loss of two wickets ends the batting team's one-over innings.

Notice what it does not say. It does not require a captain to nominate three batters, and it does not name a number of batters at all. The three-batter limit is arithmetic rather than paperwork. Two batters walk out, one of them is dismissed, the third comes in, and a second dismissal ends the innings with the fourth batter still padded up. So a side can use three, and only three, and the third one may never face a ball.

Some domestic and franchise competitions do ask captains to hand in a written nomination before the over. That is a local addition rather than an ICC requirement, and it is worth checking the conditions of the competition you are watching before assuming the list is fixed.

The two-wicket rule has one enormous consequence for how a super over is batted. In a normal Twenty20 innings a wicket costs a side some fraction of its remaining resource. Here, a wicket costs half the innings. A side that loses one off the second ball is not merely a batter down; it has spent one of its two lives inside twenty seconds, and the surviving pair now has to score at a rate the situation demands while a run-out ends everything.

That is why the received wisdom about running twos in a super over is more complicated than it looks. A two is worth a great deal when six balls is the whole innings. A run-out going for the second is worth losing the match. Sides that bat super overs well are usually the ones that have decided in advance which balls they will run hard on and which they will not.

The one-bowler rule, and the decision it forces

One bowler bowls the whole over. There is no partial over, no second bowler after an injury unless the standard replacement provisions of the match apply, and no way to hide a weak sixth ball behind somebody else's fifth.

That concentrates the captain's decision into a single choice, and the choice is genuinely hard because the two obvious criteria pull in opposite directions. A death specialist has the yorker and the wide slower ball and has bowled dozens of final overs. A wrist spinner is harder to hit for six on a small ground and harder to premeditate against. Both arguments are respectable, and the fact that the same captains keep making different choices tells you there is no settled answer.

There is a subtler constraint. Because only nominated players from the match may take part, a side that used a bowler sparingly during the innings still has him available, but a side whose best option has left the field injured does not. The composition decisions made at the toss reach forward into a super over that nobody expected to play.

The one-bowler rule also removes the option that captains use most often under pressure in a normal innings, which is to change the angle. In a well-set death over a captain can respond to a left-hander at the striker's end by swapping the bowler for somebody who takes the ball away from him. Here the bowler is fixed and only the field can move, which shifts the whole burden of the over onto field placement and on to the bowler's own variations.

Who bats first, and why it is not decided by a toss

The team batting second in the match bats first in the super over. That is the rule, it has no exceptions, and there is no coin involved.

The logic is worth spelling out because it is often described as arbitrary. The side that batted second in the match has just spent an innings chasing a known target, and the side that bowled second has just spent it defending one. Reversing the roles gives each team the experience it did not have. It also means the side that failed to chase successfully gets to set rather than chase, which reads as a small compensation.

In practice, batting first in a super over is generally reckoned to be the harder job, for the same reason batting first in any short chase is harder: you are guessing at a par score with no information, while your opponent will bat knowing exactly what is required off each remaining ball. That asymmetry is one of the few pieces of genuine strategy available, because a side batting first has to decide whether to bat for a total it thinks is defensible or to swing for a number high enough to make the chase psychologically ugly.

When a super over is repeated, the order flips again. Whoever batted second in the previous super over bats first in the next one, so the disadvantage, whichever way you think it runs, alternates rather than compounding.

1. 1Scores levelBoth innings are complete and the totals match, including against any target revised by DLS. Both sides must have had the opportunity to bat the minimum overs, or the match is a no result instead.
2. 2Five-minute changeoverThe super over normally begins five minutes after the match ends. Any penalty time being served in the match is carried forward into it.
3. 3Ball selectionThe fielding captain picks a ball from a box of balls already used in the match. No new ball is available. The side fielding second may take the same one or choose another from the box.
4. 4First overThe team that batted second in the match bats first. Six balls, two wickets, the field set as it would be for the last over of an uninterrupted innings.
5. 5Second overThe other side bats, chasing a known number. The interval between the two overs is five minutes, and each team gets one unsuccessful review in each super over innings.
6. 6If it is tied againAnother super over follows about five minutes later. The batting order flips, the bowling end swaps, dismissed batters are ineligible and the previous bowler cannot bowl again.
7. 7Until somebody winsThe sequence repeats without a fixed limit. Only a genuine constraint on time, which the match referee must flag to both captains beforehand, can cap the number of super overs.

The sequence set out in the current ICC playing conditions for men's Twenty20 and one-day internationals.

Fielding restrictions: the last over of the innings, not the powerplay

The playing conditions say the super over is played with the fielding restrictions that would apply to the last over of an uninterrupted match. That is a precise instruction and it is frequently misreported.

In a Twenty20 international the powerplay covers the first six overs of an innings, during which only two fielders may stand outside the thirty-yard circle. Every over after that allows five outside. The last over of a full innings is therefore a non-powerplay over, so a super over is bowled with five fielders on the boundary, not two.

In a one-day international the innings is divided into three phases: two fielders permitted outside the circle in the first ten overs, four in the middle thirty, and five in the last ten. The final over of a fifty-over innings sits in that last phase, so the super over allows five outside the circle there as well. The two formats land in the same place by different routes.

T20I, powerplay overs 1 to 62

T20I, overs 7 to 20 and the super over5

ODI, overs 1 to 102

ODI, overs 11 to 404

ODI, overs 41 to 50 and the super over5

From the ICC playing conditions for full-length innings. The super over uses the last-over setting in both formats.

Show the numbers

Fielders permitted outside the thirty-yard circle

Item	Fielders outside the circle
T20I, powerplay overs 1 to 6	2
T20I, overs 7 to 20 and the super over	5
ODI, overs 1 to 10	2
ODI, overs 11 to 40	4
ODI, overs 41 to 50 and the super over	5

Two general limits apply on top of that, and they are the ones that actually shape the field. No more than five fielders may be on the leg side at the instant of delivery, and no more than two of them may be behind square on the leg side. A captain protecting the leg-side boundary in a super over is working inside a much tighter budget than the headline number of five suggests, which is the same constraint that governs the way Twenty20 fields are set generally.

The ball, the end and the umpires

Three procedural details decide more super overs than they get credit for.

The ball comes from a box of spare balls provided by the umpires, and that box includes the balls used in the match but no new ones. The fielding captain, or his nominee, chooses. The side fielding second may take the same ball the first side used or pick a different one from the same box. If you have ever wondered why a captain spends thirty seconds turning balls over in his hands during the changeover, that is what he is doing: an older ball grips more and swings less, a harder one comes off the bat faster, and there is no neutral option.

The fielding side chooses which end to bowl from. That is a real decision on grounds with a slope, a short boundary on one side or a strong crosswind, and it is made independently by each team, so both overs can be bowled from the same end or from opposite ones.

The umpires stand at the end where they finished the match. It sounds like housekeeping, and it is, but it removes any argument about which official is making the wide calls that decide a six-ball innings.

Reviews carry over in an unusual way. Each side gets one unsuccessful review per innings of each super over, regardless of how many it burned during the match itself. A team that had exhausted its reviews in the twentieth over starts the super over with one again, which occasionally matters a great deal. The mechanics of the system itself are unchanged, and work exactly as described in how the decision review system operates.

If the super over is also tied

This is where the modern rule departs most sharply from the old one. Under the current playing conditions a tied super over is followed by another super over, and the sequence continues until a winner emerges. There is no cap written into the appendix.

Six specific provisions govern the repeat, and together they make each successive over harder than the last.

The batting order flips: the side that batted second in the previous super over bats first in the next. The bowling end swaps, so a fielding side must bowl from the opposite end to the one it used before. The balls chosen in the previous super over are reused by the same teams, so nobody gets a fresher ball by attrition. There are roughly five minutes between one super over and the next.

The two that bite are the eligibility rules. Any batter dismissed in a previous super over cannot bat in a subsequent one, and any bowler who bowled in a previous super over cannot bowl in the next one. A batter who survived can go again; a batter who was out is finished for the night. A side that has used its two best death bowlers in two super overs is into its third choice for the third, which is exactly when the pressure is highest.

The arithmetic of attrition is worth spelling out. A side has eleven players, of whom perhaps five or six are realistic super over bowling options and perhaps six or seven are realistic batting options. Each repeat removes one bowler permanently and up to two batters. Three tied super overs in a row would leave a captain reaching for a part-time bowler and a lower-order batter who has not faced a ball in the match. Nobody has been asked to do that yet, but the conditions do not prevent it, and the prospect is the strongest practical argument for the cap that a referee may impose.

There is one escape valve. Where an unavoidable time constraint exists, floodlights that must be switched off at a fixed hour being the example given in the conditions, the match referee may limit how many super overs can be played. He has to tell both captains before the first one starts, which prevents the limit being invented halfway through.

When a super over cannot be completed

Weather does not stop for a tiebreak. The conditions allocate extra time to the super over sequence, calculated as the greater of the gap to the match's full scheduled finish and twenty minutes, and once lost playing time exceeds that allowance, the super over is abandoned.

An abandoned super over does not produce a winner by any secondary measure. The match is declared a tie, and points are allocated as they would be for a tie. So the final position under the current rules is that cricket has stopped trying to force a result out of a match the weather will not allow to finish, and is content to record a genuine dead heat.

That is a meaningful change of philosophy from the system it replaced, which had three separate tiebreaks stacked on top of each other precisely so that a winner could always be declared.

The boundary countback rule, in the words it was actually written in

The superseded appendix is worth reading in full because the countback was not a single rule but a hierarchy of three, applied in order.

First, if the scores were level after the super over, the winner was the team whose batters had hit more boundaries across both the main match and the super over combined. Second, if the boundary counts were still equal, the winner was the team that had hit more boundaries in the main match alone, ignoring the super over. Third, if that was also equal, a ball-by-ball countback was run backwards from the final delivery of the super over: whichever team had scored more from its sixth ball won, and if those matched, the fifth, and so on. Deliveries never bowled because a side had lost two wickets counted as dot balls.

1. 1Super over tiedScores level again after each side had faced its one over. The match still had to produce a winner, so the countback provisions were applied in sequence.
2. 2First test: total boundariesThe team whose batters hit more fours and sixes across the main match and the super over combined was declared the winner.
3. 3Second test: match boundaries onlyIf those totals matched, the count was rerun using boundaries from the main match alone, with the super over excluded.
4. 4Third test: ball-by-ball countbackIf still level, deliveries were compared backwards from the last ball of the super over. Balls not bowled after two wickets counted as dots.
5. 5Removed in October 2019The ICC scrapped the boundary provisions after the men's World Cup final, on the principle that a match should be won by scoring more runs than the opposition.

The provisions of the pre-2019 ICC appendix, removed in October 2019 and replaced by repeated super overs.

Two things stand out. The rule was not a snap improvisation; it was drafted, published and had a worked example attached to it. And the least famous part of it, the ball-by-ball countback, is the fairest of the three, because it at least compares like passages of play rather than rewarding a scoring method.

What happened in 2019, and what the ICC changed afterwards

The men's World Cup final of 2019 was tied, and the super over that followed was tied as well. The first tiebreak in the hierarchy applied, boundaries across the match and the super over were counted, and England were declared world champions on that count.

The reaction was immediate and it was not confined to New Zealand. The objection was not that the rule had been misapplied; it plainly had not. The objection was that the rule made a scoring style, rather than a quantity of runs, the deciding factor in a World Cup final, and that no player walks out to bat thinking about a boundary tally.

In October 2019 the ICC removed the boundary count. Reporting at the time set out the reasoning in plain terms: the change kept faith with the basic principle that a team wins by scoring more runs than its opponent. The replacement was the repeated super over. The initial version of the change drew a distinction between group matches, where a tied super over would leave the match tied, and semi-finals and finals, where super overs would repeat until somebody won.

That distinction has since gone. The current standard playing conditions for men's Twenty20 and one-day internationals apply the repeat rule to every tied match, without carving out group games. A tie is resolved by playing more cricket, or, if there is no time to play it, by being recorded as a tie.

Before the super over there was the bowl-out

The mechanism the super over replaced is worth remembering, because it explains why cricket accepted such a strange-looking tiebreak so readily.

A bowl-out was cricket's answer to the penalty shootout. Bowlers delivered at an unguarded set of stumps and the side that hit them more often won. No batter, no fielder, no wicketkeeper, nobody moving. It was quick, it was decisive, and it tested about a tenth of the game.

The super over was adopted in Twenty20 cricket in 2008 and the first one in an international match followed at the end of that year. It won the argument for an obvious reason. A tied match is a match in which two sides have proved themselves equal at batting, bowling and fielding, so the tiebreak ought to ask them to do all three again rather than one of them in isolation. Whatever else it does, a super over is recognisably cricket.

That principle is the thread running through the whole history here. The bowl-out was replaced because it tested too little of the game. The boundary countback was replaced because it tested none of it. Repeated super overs survive because they keep asking the same question the match asked, until the answer stops being the same.

Where franchise and domestic conditions differ

Everything above describes the ICC standard playing conditions for international cricket. Domestic boards and franchise leagues write their own, and while most of them copy the appendix almost word for word, the deviations are exactly the places where a viewer gets caught out.

The most common difference is the nomination requirement. Several competitions ask each captain to hand the umpires a card naming three batters and one bowler before the over begins. Once the card is in, the list is fixed, and a captain cannot promote a different batter after seeing the first two balls. The ICC conditions contain no such requirement, so an international captain retains a freedom his franchise counterpart may not have.

The second is what happens when a competition cannot afford an unlimited sequence. A league playing four matches in a week, with a travel schedule and a broadcast window, has a stronger practical reason to cap super overs than a bilateral international does. Some conditions declare the match tied after one tied super over and split the league points. Others allow a second and stop there.

The third is the group-stage question that the ICC itself wrestled with in 2019. Where league points exist, a tie is a usable result, because both sides can take a point and the table absorbs it. In a knockout it is not usable, because somebody has to go home. That asymmetry is why the first version of the post-2019 rule treated the two cases differently, and why some domestic competitions still do.

The practical advice is unglamorous: check the competition's own conditions rather than assuming the international appendix applies. The differences are small in number and large in consequence.

Four things people get wrong about super overs

That the toss decides who bats first. It does not, and there is no toss. The side that batted second in the match bats first, without exception, and the order alternates in any repeat.

That the powerplay applies. It does not. The super over uses the field restrictions of the last over of a full innings, which means five fielders are allowed outside the circle rather than two. Commentary occasionally describes a super over field as a powerplay field, and it is the opposite of one.

That a new ball is used. It is not. The box the fielding captain chooses from contains balls already used in the match, with no new ball among them. That is a deliberate choice: a new ball would hand the bowling side an advantage it had not earned, and would make the order of the two overs matter far more than it should.

That the batting side picks any three players it likes. Only players nominated in the match itself may take part, concussion replacements included. A super over is played by the same twenty-two people, minus anybody who cannot continue for the reasons the match's own conditions recognise.

There is a fifth misunderstanding that is subtler. People often assume the super over exists to reward the better side. It does not, and it makes no such claim. Two sides that have tied have already demonstrated that they cannot be separated over the full distance. The super over is a device for producing a result when a result is required, and its only real virtue is that it asks the same three skills the match asked. Every rule in the appendix, from the two-wicket limit to the reused ball to the eligibility bans in a repeat, exists to keep it that way rather than to make it fairer in any deeper sense.

What to watch for in a super over

Five things will tell you where a super over is going before the third ball.

Watch the wicket count, not the run rate. Two dismissals end the innings, so a side one down after two balls is in far more trouble than the runs suggest. The team that keeps both its lives usually wins even from behind on the scoreboard.

Note which end the fielding side chooses. On a ground with a short boundary or a slope, the end is a genuine advantage, and each captain chooses independently. If they pick different ends, one of them believes something about the ground that the other does not.

Count the fielders on the leg side. Five outside the circle sounds generous until you remember only five may be on the leg side at all, and only two of those behind square. A captain protecting a short leg-side boundary in a super over is out of fielders almost immediately.

Look at who did not bowl in the twentieth over. Captains sometimes hold a bowler back for the situation they can already see coming. The choice made in the last over of the match often tells you the choice that will be made in the super over.

If it goes to a second over, follow the eligibility list. Dismissed batters and used bowlers are gone. By the second repeat, both sides are picking from what is left rather than from what they want, and the match is being decided by squad depth as much as by nerve.

A super over is the shortest passage of cricket that can settle anything, and every one of its rules exists to stop a captain buying his way out of it. More on the laws, the playing conditions and the arguments they cause is gathered in the cricket section, alongside the wider set of explainers on the blog. If you want the rule that most often produces the tie in the first place, start with the field restrictions that shape every format.