Overs to Balls Converter
Convert between overs and balls quickly
Overs to Balls Converter
Convert between overs and balls quickly
What is an Overs to Balls Converter?
Cricket measures time in overs and balls. One over is 6 balls under today's Laws of Cricket (it used to be 8 balls per over in Australia until 1979). This sounds simple, but converting between overs and balls quickly — especially with a partial over like 7.3 (7 overs and 3 balls) — trips people up all the time.
Worked example: a bowler has bowled 8.4 overs. That is (8 × 6) + 4 = 52 balls. It is not 8.4 × 6 = 50.4, which is what you would get if you treated the number as a normal decimal. That small difference matters when you are checking a bowler's spell against the legal limit, or working out how many balls are left in an innings.
This converter works both ways: overs to balls, and balls to overs. It also handles the cricket rule that 7.3 overs means 7 full overs plus 3 balls, which is 45 balls total — not 7.3 × 6, which would be wrong.
How to Use This Calculator
Why Overs-to-Balls Conversion Matters in Cricket
Getting this conversion right matters most when checking a bowler's over limit. In T20, no bowler can bowl more than 4 overs (24 balls) in an innings, and in a 50-over ODI the limit is 10 overs (60 balls). Getting the ball count wrong by even 1-2 balls can lead to a wrong conclusion about whether a bowler still has overs left to bowl.
It also comes up when working out DLS (Duckworth-Lewis-Stern) targets during a rain delay, since those calculations need an exact ball count, not a rounded-off number of overs. A small mistake here can throw off the whole calculation.
For fans following along, understanding this also clears up a common source of confusion when reading a scorecard — seeing "14.4 overs" and knowing straight away that it means 14 overs and 4 balls, not 14 point 4 of something, makes following live scores much easier.
?Frequently Asked Questions
Multiply the whole overs by 6, then add the extra balls. For example, 14.4 overs = (14 × 6) + 4 = 88 balls. The number after the dot means balls, not a fraction of an over — 14.4 means 14 overs and 4 balls, not 14.4 overs as a normal decimal.
0.5 overs means 0 complete overs and 5 balls — so, 5 deliveries. It does not mean half an over, which would actually be 3 balls. Always read the number after the dot as balls bowled, from 0 to 5.
Overs decide when bowlers switch ends, when fielding rules change, and how a bowler's spell is tracked. Using overs gives captains an easier way to manage their bowlers — a spell is remembered in overs, like "he bowled 4 overs," rather than a raw ball count.
Because an over only has 6 legal balls. Once all 6 are bowled, the over is done and the count moves to the next whole number — the same way 60 minutes rolls into a new hour. You will never see 14.6 in cricket; it becomes 15.0 instead.
In T20 internationals, a bowler can bowl at most 4 overs (24 balls) per innings. In a 50-over ODI, the limit is 10 overs (60 balls). Test cricket has no such limit — a bowler can keep bowling as long as the captain wants and they stay fit.
A wide or no-ball means the bowler didn't deliver a fair ball, so it doesn't count toward the 6 balls needed to complete the over. The bowler has to bowl it again. This is why an over can sometimes take more than 6 actual deliveries to finish if there are extras.
Yes, the 6-ball over is standard across Test, ODI, and T20 cricket today, and across almost every domestic league too. The only real difference between formats is the total number of overs per innings — 20 in T20, 50 in ODI, and no fixed limit in Test cricket.