Cricket formats explained

Every match on the calendar is filed under one of four formats - Test, FC (first-class), ODI or T20 - and each format has its own colour.

Four formats, four colours

The same four appear as chips in the format row of the filters, so switching one off hides every match of that format at once. A women's match is drawn in a slightly shifted shade of its format's colour, so it still reads as the same kind of cricket, and the details card you get by clicking a match names the format, whether it is a men's or women's fixture and, for a multi-day game, how many days it runs.

Test cricket

On the calendar the Test colour is kept for senior internationals. A warm-up, practice or tour match, an A-team Test, or a domestic match that a feed labels a Test is shown as first-class instead. A men's Test is scheduled over five days and a women's Test usually over four.

First-class cricket (FC)

The FC chip takes every multi-day match that is not a senior international Test: the tour matches and A-team Tests above, and domestic first-class competitions of three, four or five days, such as the County Championship, the Sheffield Shield and the Ranji Trophy. First-class cricket is multi-day, two-innings cricket below Test level.

ODI and List A

The ODI chip, whose full name is "ODI / List A", holds One Day Internationals and domestic 50-over (List A) cricket, drawn as one-day bars from their listed start to their listed finish. Both give each side a single innings of up to 50 overs.

T20, T20I and The Hundred

The T20 chip, whose full name is "T20 / Hundred", also holds The Hundred and T10 matches, so neither has a chip of its own. A T20 between two national sides is labelled "T20I" on its details card. Twenty20 gives each side one innings of 20 overs, The Hundred 100 balls and T10 ten overs.

Men's and women's cricket

Next to the format chips are two more, Men's and Women's. Switch one off and every fixture of that kind disappears, whichever format it is. The format chips and the counts in the filters always use the four base colours; only the match bars carry the women's shade.

Reading a match at a glance

A bar's colour is its format and its length is the match's length, so a five-day Test and an evening T20 on the same day are easy to tell apart. Click either one for its details. If you want to narrow things down further, the guide to following a team, a league or a ground explains the rest of the filters, and cricket and time zones covers why a multi-day match lists its hours the way it does.