Even before technology and digital innovations took over, cricket was an immensely popular sport in its classical era. The 1970s saw a boom in this popularity with the advent of color television, commercialization of the sport, and scorecard depictions on the screen. However, before this surge, cricket scores were recorded on a piece of paper and a big manual scoreboard would keep the live track of the match.
A scorekeeper was previously a common feature in cricket. This specialist had a scorecard that would depict the cricket scoreboard. Even today, domestic tournaments are often seen to be using these. There are columns for the batters and bowlers against whom there were multiple squares. These squares depicted each delivery and the event on each of these balls would be noted in these squares. For example, if a batter hits a six, then ‘6’ would be noted in the square against the name of the batter. A single run is noted as ‘1’, a wicket as ‘W’, and so on.
When there are zero runs scored off a legitimate delivery, then the scorekeeper would simply put a dot in the square. Thus, this event is called a dot ball. In test cricket, a dot ball is not a rare event as matches are held between three to five days, and each side is scheduled to bat twice alternatively. Since the scoring rate is low, dot balls have little significance in first class cricket.
Notably, in test cricket, not necessarily does a dot ball indicate the weakness of a batter or the batting side. It is often a sign of resilience, as surviving on pitches that favor the bowlers in test cricket highlights the strength of a batter.
On the other hand, limited overs cricket played in the T20 and One Day International format have a faster scoring rate. Since there is a restriction on the number of balls per innings, the batting side aims to score runs faster. The goal of bowlers is to take the wickets of the batters. Additionally, their second goal is to restrict the flow of runs of the batting side. This makes dot balls a lot more important in limited overs format.
When a bowler bowls six dot balls in a row or does not give any runs that are scored off the batter’s bat, then that over is called a maiden. Should a bowler claim a wicket in a maiden over, then it is called a maiden wicket.
A higher dot ball count might not necessarily mean that a bowler has a better economy rate. A bowler can bowl four dot balls in a row and give away two boundaries in the next two balls which eventually is an over that sways in the favor of the batting side. Thus, batters also need to be vary off how to make up for the dot balls that they already piled up.
In limited overs cricket, the number of dot balls often prove to be the decisive factor in a team’s loss. Thus, a batting side will always try to avoid accumulating the dot balls count.
