Cricket at the Olympics: T20 Rules Explained

Cricket returns after 128 years in its three-hour format. Here’s everything a newcomer needs in one read.

Torch Editorial · 6 min read · Updated July 2026

Cricket returns to the Olympics at LA28 for the first time since 1900 — and it’s in T20, the short, explosive format built for exactly this kind of new audience. If you’ve never watched a match, this is all you need.

The basic idea

Two teams of eleven take turns batting (scoring runs) and bowling/fielding (restricting runs and taking wickets). In T20 each team bats once for a maximum of 20 overs — an over being six legal deliveries — so an innings is 120 balls. Whoever scores more runs across their innings wins. The whole thing takes around three hours.

Scoring runs

• Batters score by running between the two sets of stumps after hitting the ball — each completed length is one run.
• A ball hit to the boundary rope scores 4; hit over it on the full scores 6 — the home run of cricket.
• A batting innings is a race to pile up runs before losing ten wickets (outs).

Getting out

A batter can be dismissed several ways — the common ones: bowled (the ball hits the stumps), caught (a fielder catches it on the full), run out (the stumps are broken before the batter completes a run), and LBW (leg before wicket — the ball would have hit the stumps but the batter’s body blocked it). Ten wickets down and the innings is over, even if overs remain.

How to watch it as a newcomer

Track two numbers: the batting team’s runs / wickets (e.g., 140/6) and the overs bowled. Late in an innings, teams “swing for the fences” trying to maximize runs before they run out of balls — that’s when the sixes fly and matches are won or lost. It’s cricket at its most frantic, and it’s a superb entry point to the sport.