Overs to balls converter

Why 4.4 + 3.3 is 8.1

An over is six legal balls. Scorers write overs as whole overs, a dot, then the balls bowled in the over that is under way, so the digit after the dot runs from 0 to 5 and never reaches 6: the ball after 16.5 makes it 17 overs. That makes the dot a separator, not a decimal point.

To do sums, turn everything into balls first: overs × 6 + balls. 4.4 is 28 balls and 3.3 is 21, so together they are 49 balls, which is 8 overs and 1 ball, written 8.1. Adding them as decimals gives 7.7, an impossible figure. Subtraction works the same way: 50 overs less 32.4 is 300 − 196 = 104 balls, or 17.2 overs left.

Decimal overs are what rate sums need. Each ball is a sixth of an over, so 16.4 overs is 16⅔, or 16.667. Run rates, economy rates and net run rates all divide by this figure, never by 16.4. Going the other way, a spreadsheet's 16.67 is 100 balls, which a scoreboard shows as 16.4.

Six-ball overs have been used in all Test cricket since 1979/80. Before that, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and, for a time, England and Pakistan used eight-ball overs, so old scorecards from those countries may show figures like 22.7. Switch to 8 balls to convert them.