In the sport of cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

, a bowling analysis (sometimes shortened to just analysis, especially in the phrase innings analysis) usually refers to a notation summarising a bowler's performance in terms of overs

Over (cricket)

In the sport of cricket, an over is a set of six consecutive balls bowled in succession. An over is normally bowled by a single bowler. However, in the event of injury preventing a bowler from completing an over, it is completed by a teammate....

 bowled, how many of those overs are maidens (ie with no runs conceded), total runs

Run (cricket)

In the sport of cricket, a run is the basic unit of scoring. Runs are scored by a batsman, and the aggregate of the scores of a team's batsmen constitutes the team's score. A batsman scoring 50 or 100 runs , or any higher multiple of 50 runs, is considered a particular achievement...

 conceded and number of wickets taken. Bowling analyses are generally given for each innings

Innings

An inning, or innings, is a fixed-length segment of a game in any of a variety of sports – most notably cricket and baseball during which one team attempts to score while the other team attempts to prevent the first from scoring. In cricket, the term innings is both singular and plural and is...

 in cricket scoreboards printed in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack

Wisden Cricketers' Almanack

Wisden Cricketers' Almanack is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom...

, newspapers and so on, but they are also sometimes quoted for other periods of time, such as a single spell of bowling. For example, an innings analysis of 9.4-1-31-2 would indicate that the bowler had bowled nine overs and four balls, of which one was a maiden, and that he had taken two wickets for a total cost of 31 runs.

In some cases, maidens are omitted from bowling figures, and are recorded showing 'Wickets/Runs (Overs)'; for example, 7/15 (7) by Glenn McGrath

Glenn McGrath

Glenn Donald McGrath AM , nicknamed "Pigeon", is a former Australian cricket player. He is one of the most highly regarded fast-medium pace bowlers in cricketing history, and a leading contributor to Australia's domination of world cricket from the mid-1990s to the early 21st century...

 against Namibia

Namibia national cricket team

The Namibia cricket team is the team that represents the country of Namibia in international cricket matches. It is governed by Cricket Namibia, an associate member of the International Cricket Council since 1992 and became part of the High Performance Program in 2007. They took part in the 2003...

 shows he took his 7 wickets for 15 runs in 7 overs.

In tests

Test cricket

Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

, the best bowling analysis is 10-53 by Jim Laker

Jim Laker

James "Jim" Charles Laker was a cricketer who played for England in the 1950s, known for "Laker's match" in 1956 at Old Trafford, when he took nineteen wickets in England's victory against Australia...

. The best bowling analysis in ODIs is 8-19 by Chaminda Vaas

Chaminda Vaas

Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas , usually known as Chaminda Vaas, is a Sri Lankan cricketer is regarded as the best fast bowler to have come out of the country - he has been described as the 'most penetrative and successful new-ball bowler Sri Lanka have had'...

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