What are Extras in Cricket? | Types of Extras

If you have gone through a scorecard of a cricket match by any chance, you must have noticed ‘Extras’ mentioned at the bottom of it.

But what are these extras? Why are they added to a batting team’s score? And how many types of extras are there?

Here’s an explainer on extras in cricket and their types.

What are Extras in Cricket?

Think of extras as bonus runs. Every time a bowler makes a mistake or batters score runs without hitting the ball with the bat, the batting team earns extras.

Extras are also known as sundries, which don’t contribute to a batter’s individual score. But they do get credited to the batting team’s overall total.

Most of the time, bowlers concede extras unintentionally, while sometimes it’s due to batters not connecting the ball well. But not all extras get added to the bowler’s figures.

So how many types of extras are given in cricket?

There are 5 types of extras. Here, we’ll look at them one by one.

Types of Extras in Cricket

A batting team earns extras through illegal deliveries bowled by bowlers, runs scored other than the bat, and penalty runs.

1. Wide Ball

A wide ball is one of the illegal deliveries bowled by a bowler. When a ball delivered by a bowler is out of the reach of a batter or passes outside the wide guidelines, umpires signal it as wide. The batting team stands a chance to get 1 run for each wide delivery.

2. No Ball

This is another type of illegal delivery in the game. When a bowler oversteps the bowling crease or bowls a waist-high full toss, umpires call it a no ball. Similar to the wide ball, a no ball fetches 1 run to the batting side.

Extras given through the above illegal deliveries are added to the respective bowler’s stats.

3. Bye

When batters score runs, even if the ball didn’t come in contact with the striker’s bat, their protective equipment, or their body part, then such runs come under ‘bye’. 

Batters can score as many runs as possible until the ball becomes dead, though the runs won’t be added to a batter’s score.

4. Leg Bye

This is somewhat the opposite of bye. When batters score runs off the ball that made contact with the striker’s body or protective equipment but missed the bat or the hand holding the bat, then umpires signal them as ‘leg bye’.

Batting teams can earn boundaries even on byes and leg byes. And runs scored off byes and leg byes are not attached to the bowler’s figures.

5. Penalty Runs

Umpires can award 5 penalty runs to the batting team for any unfair play carried out by the fielding team. They are denoted as ‘Penalty Extras’ in the scorecard.

You can check out our detailed guide on penalty runs here.

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