Bowl Out

A bowl-out (sometimes termed a bowl-off) is used in various forms of limited overs cricket to decide a match that would otherwise end in a tie. The procedure is similar to a penalty shootout in association football. Five bowlers from each side deliver one ball each at an unguarded wicket. If each team has hit the same number of wickets after the first five balls per side, the bowling continues and is decided by sudden death.

In some forms of domestic one-day cricket competition, a bowl-out is used to decide the result when the match is tied or rained out: for example, the quarterfinal of the Minor Counties Cricket Association Knockout Trophy in 2004, when Northumberland beat Cambridgeshire 4-2.

In Twenty20 cricket, if the match ends with the scores level (either because both teams reach the same score after 20 overs, or the second team falls one run short of the target score under the Duckworth-Lewis method), the tie is broken with a bowl-out. A bowl-out was first used to decide a domestic Twenty20 match when Surrey beat Warwickshire in July 2005. The first international bowl-out in a Twenty20 match took place on 16 February 2006, when New Zealand beat West Indies 3-0 in Auckland. A bowl-out was also used on 14 September 2007 when India beat Pakistan 3-0 during the 2007 ICC World Twenty20 in Durban, South Africa.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) introduced the bowl-out should scores be tied in the semifinals and final of the 2006 ICC Champions Trophy or the 2007 Cricket World Cup, although it was not required to be used in either tournament.