Overs to balls converter

How overs are written

An over is 6 legal balls (Law 17). Scorers write part overs as overs.balls, so 18.2 overs means 18 completed overs and 2 balls. The figure after the point is a count of balls, so it only runs from 0 to 5: after 18.5 comes 19.0. Wides and no-balls are bowled again and are not one of the six, which is why an over can have more than six deliveries.

The formulas

• Overs to balls: overs × 6 + the balls after the point. 12.3 = 12 × 6 + 3 = 75 balls.
• Balls to overs: divide by 6; the whole number is the overs and the remainder is the balls. 75 ÷ 6 = 12 remainder 3, written 12.3.
• Overs to true decimal: balls ÷ 6. 75 ÷ 6 = 12.5.
• True decimal to overs: multiply by 6 to get balls, then write them as overs. 12.5 × 6 = 75 balls = 12.3.

Why 12.3 overs is not 12.3

A run rate divides by overs, and a calculator reads 12.3 as twelve and three tenths. But three balls is half an over, so 12.3 overs is really 12.5. Using the scoreboard figure makes every rate a little wrong: 90 runs off 18.2 overs is 90 ÷ 18.333 = 4.91 an over, while 90 ÷ 18.2 would give 4.95. The same slip breaks required run rate, net run rate and economy sums.

Common conversions

The Hundred: balls, not overs

The Hundred counts 100 balls per side and its scoreboard shows balls rather than overs. A bowler delivers 5 or 10 balls in a row and the ends change after every 10 balls, so an innings is 20 sets of five. In six-ball terms, 100 balls would be 16.4 overs. See The Hundred rules for the rest of the format.

Edge cases

• 12.6 does not exist. The sixth ball completes the over, so the converter rejects anything above 5 after the point and tells you the right form: 12.6 would be 13.0.
• Rounded decimals: 12.333 is 12.2 overs rounded to three places. The converter snaps a decimal that is within a twentieth of a ball of a whole ball, so 12.333 reads as 74 balls.
• Decimals that are not whole balls: 12.25 overs would be 73.5 balls, which cannot happen, so you get the two nearest real values instead. If you type a scorebook figure such as 12.3 as a decimal, the converter also says what it is in balls.
• Rain-shortened matches: converting reduced overs is simple (15 overs is 90 balls), but revised targets come from the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) method, which this tool does not calculate.