Dismissal (cricket)

NSW Breakers' Nicola Carey is bowled by ACT Meteors' Marizanne Kapp (not pictured). Note the ball, and the flying bails, one of which has broken into two pieces.

In cricket, a dismissal occurs when a batter's innings is brought to an end by the opposing team. Other terms used are the batter being out, the batting side losing a wicket, and the fielding side taking a wicket. The ball becomes dead (meaning that no further runs can be scored off that delivery), and the dismissed batter must leave the field of play for the rest of their team's innings, to be replaced by a team-mate. A team's innings ends if ten of the eleven team members are dismissed. Players bat in pairs so, when only one batter remains who can be not out, it is not possible for the team to bat any longer. This is known as dismissing or bowling out the batting team, who are said to be all out.

The most common methods of dismissing a batter are (in descending order of frequency): caught, bowled, leg before wicket, run out, and stumped. Of these, the leg before wicket and stumped methods of dismissal can be seen as related to, or being special cases of, the bowled and run out methods of dismissal respectively.

Most methods of dismissal do not apply on an illegal delivery (i.e. a wide or no-ball) or on the free hit delivery that follows a no-ball in certain competitions. Among the common methods of dismissal, only the "run out" dismissal can occur during any type of delivery.[1][2][3]

  1. ^ "Law 22: Wide ball". Laws of Cricket. MCC. Retrieved 30 June 2022.
  2. ^ "Law 21: No ball". Laws of Cricket. MCC. Retrieved 30 June 2022.
  3. ^ Sami-ul-Hasan (2 October 2007). "Clarification to free-hit regulation in ODIs". ESPN cricinfo.