Cricket fours and sixes: read the boundary and the score

A ball sails towards the edge of a cricket field and the crowd celebrates. Before writing six in your notebook, wait for the decision. Height alone does not establish the boundary award, and a team's total is not the same thing as one batter's score.

This is a spectator's guide to ordinary boundaries with the usual four-run and six-run allowances. Its examples are invented. They exclude overthrows, wilful acts by fielders, penalty runs, dismissals and disputed boundary catches. Competition conditions and unusual incidents need their own checks.

Separate the ball's path from the award

Law 19 of the 2026 MCC Laws of Cricket distinguishes the two ordinary awards. A six requires a bat strike and first grounding beyond the boundary, without earlier ground contact inside. A boundary after an inside bounce is four. Without a bat strike, it is not a boundary six. Different allowances can be agreed before the toss.

The following card describes three uncomplicated, completed boundary events from bat strikes. It is not a guide to judging a fielder's airborne catch or a photograph taken before the ball lands.

Our three ordinary boundary examples

Shot	Inside contact	Award
Rolling drive	Ground	Four
Lofted, then boundary	One bounce	Four
Directly beyond	None	Six

Read the whole description before choosing a row. “Lofted” describes the shot's flight, not its final score. If your view ends while the ball is still in the air, the observation is incomplete.

Look for the umpire's signal

Northamptonshire County Cricket Club's spectator guide illustrates the distinction: an arm swept across the body signals four; both arms raised above the head signal six. These gestures let you check the decision without treating the crowd's response as the score.

Use three notebook columns: what you saw, the signal, and the confirmed entry. For example, “ball disappeared behind a fielder; signal not visible; awaiting score” preserves the gap. Writing a guessed number first can make a later correction harder to notice.

When watching a replay, establish whether it belongs to the delivery currently on the scoreboard. A delayed close-up of an earlier shot is useful evidence of that shot, but it should not create a second entry in your running total.

Credit the batter and team separately

ActiveSG's explanation of cricket runs separates individual scoring from the team total: runs off the bat contribute to both, while extras belong to the team. Our arithmetic exercise has no extras.

Imagine a team has 80 runs and its striker has 24. The next confirmed entry is four off that striker's bat. Write 84 for the team and 28 for the striker. Those are two records of the same contribution, not eight runs added to the team.

If that striker later scores a confirmed six with no intervening scoring, the figures become 90 and 34. Check the increases independently: the team gained ten and the striker gained ten across the two entries. Do not add the striker's entire 34 to the team's original 80.

This is similar to checking column meanings in our basketball box-score guide, but cricket uses its own scoring rules.

Do not add running and boundary totals automatically

For an ordinary boundary, MCC Law 19.7 awards the greater of the allowance or completed runs plus a run in progress if the batters had crossed. It does not add both figures. Thus two completed runs before an ordinary boundary four do not make six. Overthrows have separate provisions.

Keep the overs field separate too. Our cricket overs guide explains its count of valid balls. A large score increase and a change in that field answer different questions; copy each under its own heading.

Practical takeaway

Record the observed event, confirm the signal and update the correct score columns once. Leave uncertain entries visibly unresolved until the official record clarifies them. A useful notebook distinguishes what happened from what your viewing angle allowed you to see.