What is a powerplay in cricket? The rules in ODIs, T20s and the IPL
Six overs in a T20, three separate blocks in an ODI, and a different fielder limit for each. Here are the current rules for both formats, how they got here, and what twenty-four years of ball-by-ball data says they achieved.
Jun 22, 2022 · Updated Aug 20, 2026
A powerplay is a block of overs in a limited-overs match during which the fielding side must keep most of its players inside the 30-yard circle. Fewer fielders on the boundary means gaps, and gaps mean runs, which is why sides pick their most attacking batters for it and their best bowlers against it.
The rules are not the same in every format, and the ODI version is not one powerplay but three blocks. Here is what applies where.
Powerplay rules in T20 and IPL cricket
The T20 powerplay is the first six overs of each innings. During those overs a maximum of two fielders may stand outside the 30-yard circle. Everyone else, the bowler and the wicketkeeper included, has to be inside it.
From the seventh over to the twentieth, that limit rises to five. There is no second powerplay in a T20 innings and no discretion about when the first one happens; it is simply the opening six overs.
If the fielding side gets it wrong and has a third fielder outside the circle as the ball is bowled, the umpire calls a no-ball and the batting side receives a free hit next delivery.
| Overs | Fielders allowed outside the circle |
|---|---|
| 1 to 6 (powerplay) | 2 |
| 7 to 20 | 5 |
The IPL uses these rules unchanged. What that has been worth in practice is a separate question, and the numbers have moved a long way: our list of the highest and lowest powerplay scores in IPL history runs from 125 without loss down to 13 for 6.
The same six overs decide a good deal of the individual record book too. We keep separate lists for the highest powerplay totals in T20 internationals, the batters with the most runs in powerplays in T20 cricket, and the bowlers with the most powerplay wickets in the IPL, a list Bhuvneshwar Kumar leads on 94.
Powerplay rules in ODI cricket
A 50-over innings is divided into three blocks, each with its own fielding limit. This is the arrangement that has been in force since July 2015.
| Overs | Name | Fielders allowed outside the circle |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 10 | Mandatory powerplay | 2 |
| 11 to 40 | Second block | 4 |
| 41 to 50 | Final block | 5 |
All three blocks are compulsory and fixed. Neither captain chooses when they fall, which was not always true.
How many powerplays are there in an ODI?
Three blocks of fielding restrictions, but only the first is normally called the powerplay. The old batting powerplay and bowling powerplay, which the captains could take at a time of their choosing, were abolished in 2015. If you hear a commentator refer to “the second powerplay” they mean overs 11 to 40, and if they say a side has “used its powerplay” in a current ODI, the phrase is a hangover from the older rules.
The quickest way to check any version of these rules is to add them up. The ODI blocks have to total the innings: 10 plus 30 plus 10 is 50. The T20 blocks work the same way, 6 plus 14 making 20. A description that does not reconcile is describing a set of rules that no longer exists, which is common enough on pages that were written a decade ago and never revisited.
Rain complicates it. When overs are lost the powerplay shrinks in proportion, so a rain-hit T20 can have a powerplay of one or two overs rather than six. Since July 2025 the ICC has calculated that proportion to the nearest ball rather than the nearest over, which changed some of the answers.
| Innings length | Powerplay |
|---|---|
| 5 overs | 1.3 overs |
| 8 overs | 2.2 overs |
| 10 overs | 3 overs |
| 15 overs | 4.3 overs |
| 20 overs | 6 overs |
An eight-over innings used to carry a three-over powerplay and now carries 2.2. All of this is worth knowing before comparing a powerplay score against a record, and it is separate from how the target itself gets recalculated by the DLS method.
What the powerplay is actually worth
The interesting part is what all this rule-writing has achieved, and the answer differs sharply between the two formats.
Take every men’s ODI innings that lasted the full 50 overs, split it into the three blocks, and the share of the innings scored in each has barely moved in twenty-four years. The figures below come from ball-by-ball data covering 2002 to August 2026.
| Era | Overs 1-10 | Overs 11-40 | Overs 41-50 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2002-2005, before powerplays | 17.1% | 54.2% | 28.7% |
| 2005-2008, powerplays introduced | 16.9% | 55.4% | 27.7% |
| 2008-2011, batting powerplay added | 17.8% | 54.0% | 28.1% |
| 2011-2015, powerplay fixed to overs 16-36 | 16.2% | 55.2% | 28.6% |
| 2015-2026, current rules | 17.2% | 55.2% | 27.6% |
The rules were rewritten four times and the shape of an ODI innings did not change. The first ten overs have produced between 16.2 and 17.8 per cent of the runs under every regime, including the years before powerplays existed at all. Totals did rise, from an average of 250.7 in the first era to 281.5 in the current one, but they rose everywhere at once.
The other number worth taking from that table is that the last ten overs are worth more than the first ten in every single era, and by a wide margin. Under the current rules an ODI side averages 48.4 in the opening block at 4.84 an over, and 77.8 in the closing block at 7.78, with five fielders out rather than two. Fielding restrictions are not what makes runs; batters with wickets in hand are.
T20 has gone the other way, and without any rule change at all.
| IPL season | Powerplay average | Innings average | Powerplay share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 41.2 | 154.0 | 26.7% |
| 2018 | 49.8 | 172.2 | 28.9% |
| 2022 | 47.4 | 171.6 | 27.6% |
| 2024 | 55.3 | 190.5 | 29.0% |
| 2026 | 60.4 | 196.7 | 30.7% |
The IPL powerplay took between 26.7 and 29.5 per cent of an innings for fifteen seasons. Since 2022 it has climbed every year, to 30.7 per cent in 2026. The T20 fielding rules have not been touched in that time, so whatever moved is about how sides bat, and the Impact Player rule, which lets a side bat deeper than eleven, arrived in 2023 in the middle of it.
One scope note on the ODI figures: the ball-by-ball archive they are derived from contains no Afghanistan matches at all, so Afghanistan’s innings are absent from those era averages. The comparison between eras is unaffected, since the gap applies equally across all of them.
How the rules got here
The idea is older than the word. Fifteen-over field restrictions appeared in South African domestic one-day cricket in the mid-1970s and were picked up by World Series Cricket in 1977-78, and they reached international one-day cricket in Australia in the 1980-81 season. By the 1992 World Cup the standard was two fielders outside the circle for the first fifteen overs and five for the remaining thirty-five.
The ICC introduced powerplays proper in 2005, cutting the restriction into three: a mandatory ten overs at the start, then two blocks of five that the fielding captain could call whenever he liked. In 2008 one of those five-over blocks was handed to the batting side to take at a moment of its choosing.
That produced a problem nobody had planned for. Sides began saving the batting powerplay until the closing overs, which was the opposite of the intention, since the point had been to break up the quiet middle period. From 1 October 2011 the ICC ruled that neither discretionary block could begin before the 16th over or be completed after the 40th. This is the rule most often quoted as “overs 16 to 36”, which is the window in which a block could legally start rather than the window in which it could be played.
On 5 July 2015 the whole apparatus was scrapped. The batting powerplay went, the discretionary blocks went, the requirement to keep two catching fielders inside the circle in the opening overs went, and sides were allowed a fifth fielder on the boundary in the last ten rather than four. The innings settled into the fixed 10, 30 and 10 still in use today. On the evidence above, none of it changed how an ODI innings is scored.
The scoreboard at the top of this page is a relic of that period. Grounds had to post how many powerplay overs were still to come, because until 2015 nobody in the crowd could work it out from the over number alone. No scoreboard needs that line today.
The most recent change to the 50-over game left the powerplays alone entirely. From mid-2025 an ODI innings uses two new balls for the first 34 overs, after which the fielding side picks one of them for the rest, an attempt to give the older ball a chance to reverse in exactly the closing block where five fielders are already permitted out.
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Featured photo: AFP / EMMANUEL DUNAND