Over Rate and Overs Short Calculator

How many overs the fielding side was short of the minimum, after the time allowances the playing conditions actually grant — two minutes a wicket, four a drinks break. The required rate is an input, because 15 an hour in a Test and 14.28 in an ODI are different numbers.

Formula, and the allowances that make it non-obvious

Minimum over rates and what being short of them costs

The time allowances, which are the hard part

What “twelve overs short” is actually a calculation of

An over rate is the simplest-sounding disciplinary number in cricket and one of the hardest to check, because the overs a side was required to bowl are not the overs that fit into the time it was in the field. The ICC Men’s Test Match Playing Conditions set the requirement at clause 12.9.1 — “The minimum over rate to be achieved in Matches shall be 15 overs per hour” — and then spend seven sub-clauses taking time back out of the calculation before it is applied. The second table above lists all nine allowances with their clause numbers.

Only two of them are arithmetic a reader can do, and one has a trap in it. Clause 12.9.3.6 gives two minutes for a wicket, but only where the next batter began their innings immediately, and nothing at all for the final wicket of an innings or for one falling immediately before an interval — so the qualifying wickets are usually fewer than the wickets that fell. The other five allowances are the umpires’ record of what actually happened, which is why nobody outside the match officials can reproduce a published figure and why this page has a field for that time rather than a formula. Clause 12.9.5 does at least mean a side is never short by surprise: the third umpire must tell it where it stands at least every half-hour and the figure goes on the screen.

The penalty counts whole overs — clause 12.9.6 imposes “one Penalty Over for each full over the team falls short” — so a shortfall of 0.9 of an over is nothing and one of 1.25 is one. Clauses 12.9.4.1 to 12.9.4.3 also waive the sanction altogether in three situations this page does not apply for you.

What being short costs depends on who is counting, and it has changed. The first table above gives six mechanisms across five bodies of rule, with the date each was read. Two are worth setting out in prose because they are the cases the ICC published itself. On 16 July 2025 England lost two World Test Championship points and ten per cent of their match fee for being two overs short at Lord’s; on 21 June 2026 they lost twelve points and fifty per cent of their fee for being twelve overs short at the Oval. Both items cite Article 16.11.2 of the championship’s playing conditions and Article 2.22 of the ICC Code of Conduct — and neither document was read for this page, because clause 16 of the Test Match conditions as received runs only to 16.8, so Article 16.11.2 sits in a separate regulation that could not be obtained. Note also that twelve overs at five per cent is sixty per cent and the fine was fifty. Neither item explains the difference, the Code of Conduct’s text was not read, and so no cap is claimed here.

The limited-overs formats punish it in the match instead of afterwards — ICC Men’s ODI Playing Conditions clause 13.8.2 takes a fielder out from outside the circle, and the Twenty20 equivalent brings one in — so which mechanism you are subject to is a property of the competition rather than of cricket, and a page answering “five per cent an over” without asking would be wrong for most readers. The restrictions that penalty reaches for are on the powerplay and over limits interpreter; the championship points a deduction comes out of are on the Test championship points percentage calculator, which reproduces the ICC’s own published 34.72 per cent from the England case above.

This page therefore asks for the completed overs and the balls in the unfinished over as two separate fields rather than taking the scorecard figure as one number. That is a deliberate choice and worth stating, because the alternative is tempting: a single field can be decomposed arithmetically with floor(ov) + (ov − floor(ov)) × 10 / 6. It gives the right answer for a legal figure and a silently wrong one for an illegal figure whose ball count reaches 6, which is not a scorebook number at all because an over has only six balls. Two fields, with the balls field limited to 0–5, cannot be entered wrongly.

The numbers on this page are playing conditions, not laws of the game, and playing conditions belong to a competition rather than to cricket. The ICC revises them between seasons, and national boards and franchise leagues write their own. Every figure here is printed with the body that publishes it, the clause it sits in and the effective date printed on the document it was read from, and all of it was read from that body’s own document on 12 October 2026. A newer edition may already be in force by the time you read this. Check the conditions for the match in front of you before you act on anything here.

Frequently asked questions

Related calculators

References

1. International Cricket Council. ICC Men’s Test Match Playing Conditions, “Effective from June 2025” — 12.9.1 (“The minimum over rate to be achieved in Matches shall be 15 overs per hour”), 12.9.2 (calculated at the end of the match across both of the batting side’s innings), 12.9.3.1–12.9.3.7 (the time allowances, including 2 minutes a wicket where the next batter starts immediately, with nothing for an innings’ final wicket or one just before an interval, and 4 minutes a drinks break), 12.9.4.1–12.9.4.3 (the 80 and 160-over exemptions), 12.9.5 (the third umpire advises at least every 30 minutes), 12.9.6 (“one Penalty Over for each full over the team falls short”), 12.7.11, and 14.1.1–14.1.2 (the follow-on, restating 200 / 150 / 100 / 75). images.icc-cricket.com (read 12 Oct 2026). Clause 16 as received runs only to 16.8 and contains no 16.11.
2. International Cricket Council. ICC Men’s One-Day International Playing Conditions, “Effective from July 2025” — 12.8.1 (“The minimum over rate to be achieved in ODI Matches shall be 14.28 overs per hour”), 13.8.2 (the in-match penalty: from the next over after the cessation time, no more than 4 fielders outside the fielding restriction area for the rest of the innings), 13.8.5, 16.3.1 and 16.3.1.1 (equal scores bring a Super Over; a tied Super Over brings further Super Overs unless paragraph 25 of Appendix G applies; where none can produce a winner the match is tied), 21.10 (a cross-reference), 21.15–21.18, 21.19.1–21.19.3 (the free hit), 22.1.1.2 (a Wide where the ball passes above the head height of the striker standing upright at the popping crease), 22.6–22.9. images.icc-cricket.com (read 12 Oct 2026). The extracted text stops inside clause 23, so clause 28.7.2.3 and Appendix G were not read.
3. International Cricket Council. England docked WTC points for slow over-rate in Oval Test, 21 June 2026 — England twelve overs short after time allowances in the second Test against New Zealand, deducted twelve World Test Championship points to 38 and fined 50 per cent of the match fee; “their Points Percentage drops from 34.72 to 26.38”, and they stay seventh. Cites World Test Championship playing conditions Article 16.11.2 (one point for each over short) and ICC Code of Conduct Article 2.22 (five per cent of the match fee for each over short). icc-cricket.com (read 12 Oct 2026). Twelve overs at five per cent is sixty per cent and the fine was fifty; the item does not explain the difference and the Code of Conduct’s text was not read, so no cap is claimed.
4. International Cricket Council. England docked points for slow over-rate, 16 July 2025 — two World Test Championship points deducted and ten per cent of the match fee fined after the third Test against India at Lord’s, taking England from 24 to 22 of 36 points. Cites the same two provisions, World Test Championship playing conditions Article 16.11.2 and ICC Code of Conduct Article 2.22. icc-cricket.com (read 12 Oct 2026).
5. International Cricket Council. Several changes made to ICC Playing Conditions, 27 June 2025 — the Test stop clock: the fielding side must be ready to bowl the first ball of the next over within 60 seconds, two warnings an innings and five penalty runs for each failure after that, the warnings resetting after 80 overs. Also the boundary-catch rule and the DRS wicket zone as the outline of the stumps and bails. In force from 17 June 2025 in Tests, 2 July 2025 in ODIs and 10 July 2025 in T20Is. icc-cricket.com (read 12 Oct 2026).
6. International Cricket Council. ICC makes changes to Playing Conditions, 19 September 2022 — the conditions effective 1 October 2022. Records that the in-match over-rate penalty in Twenty20 internationals was introduced in January 2022, “an additional fielder having to be brought inside the fielding circle” for the rest of the innings, and that it would be adopted in ODIs after the 2023 Cricket World Cup Super League. Also cuts the incoming batter’s time from three minutes to two in Tests and ODIs, leaving 90 seconds in Twenty20 internationals. icc-cricket.com (read 12 Oct 2026).
7. International Cricket Council. ICC Men’s Standard ODI Playing Conditions, “Effective December 2023”, hosted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India — read only as independent corroboration of the July 2025 document at the same clause numbers: 12.8.1 (14.28 overs per hour), 13.8.2, 13.8.5 and 21.19.1–21.19.3 (the free hit). documents.bcci.tv (read 12 Oct 2026). Its contents page puts Section 28 at page 40, corroborating that clause 28.7.2.3 exists; the clause itself is not in the extracted text.
8. Marylebone Cricket Club. The Laws of Cricket, 2017 Code — Law 17.1, “The ball shall be bowled from each end alternately in overs of 6 balls”, and 17.3.3, only valid balls count towards the six. lords.org (read 12 Oct 2026). The MCC’s Laws index lists the current edition as the 2017 Code 4th Edition (2026), while the individual Law pages still carry a 2017 copyright line.