A super over is a way of settling a tied cricket match where there must be a winner. It involves both teams playing one more over.
The rules for a super over are not in the Laws of Cricket but instead are part of the playing conditions of a tournament, so can vary occasionally. The most common format is that each team bats for one over with the other team fielding, and vice versa. The over will have the normal rules such as lasting six balls (plus any wide or no ball deliveries) and having the same bowler throughout. However, if the batting team loses two wickets, the over ends immediately. This means teams can use a maximum of three batters in the super over.
A super over will normally only be used in a limited innings game (such as a one-day or T20 match) where the competition requires a winner, such as the knockout stages or a final. Occasionally it’s used in league stages where it would be viable to split the points for winning between the team, but organizers want to add excitement to the games, such as happens in the Indian Super League.
If both teams get the same score in the super over, the competition rules decide what happens to resolve. Approaches include:
- Playing another super over (and repeating until one team wins.) Sometimes teams are barred from using the same bowler or batters in the second super over.
- Having the team which scored the most boundaries declared the winner, as happened in the 2019 Men’s World Cup final. In this case the rules first looked at boundaries across the game including the super over. As this was the same for both teams, the next step was to count boundaries excluding the super over.
- Using countback for the super over. This means comparing the highest score either team got from a single ball. If this is the same you go to each team’s second highest scoring ball and so on. For example, if one team scored 1-0-6-4-2-1 from its six balls and the other got 6-4-0-0-0-4, the second team would win. That’s because each team’s highest scoring ball got a six, each team’s second-highest scoring ball got a four, but the second team’s third-highest scoring ball was a four compared with a two for the first team.
The super over isn’t used in games where a result isn’t possible because of poor weather. Instead most competitions say that if a winner must be found, the teams will either toss a coin or take part in a bowlout, which usually needs an indoor facility. In a bowlout, each team gets five chances for a bowler to deliver a ball and try to hit the wicket (with no batter in place). This is usually considered a last resort before using a coin toss because it’s not a complete test of cricketing ability as it doesn’t involve batting or fielding.