How to play English Cricket
Two players, batting and bowling like the summer game. The batter adds their three darts up and banks whatever the turn makes OVER 40, anywhere on the board. The bowler throws at the bull to take wickets — the outer bull is one, the bullseye is two. Ten wickets closes the innings, the roles swap, and after both innings the most runs wins. Whoever throws first bats first.
Chuck Darts scores this game to exactly the rules on this page, and keeps the card open mid-match so anybody at the board can check one. A full leg of 501, a board of Cricket and six practice drills are playable right now with no account at all.
BATTING
Add your three darts up. Whatever the total makes OVER 40 is your runs, and a turn of 40 or less scores nothing at all. A turn of 60 banks 20; 41 banks one; 38 is a duck, and so is 40 exactly. The whole board counts towards that total, at face value times the ring, and that includes the bull — the outer is 25 and the bullseye is 50. There is no number to hit and no bed is dead. T20 S20 S15 is 95 on the board, so it banks 55 runs. The 40 comes off the TURN, not off each dart. Three 14s is 42, which banks two runs even though no single dart is worth anything like 40.
BOWLING
Only the bull counts. The outer bull takes one wicket; the inner bull — the bullseye — takes two. Nothing else the bowler throws does anything. Ten wickets closes the innings, so it is five bullseyes, ten outer bulls, or any mix that adds to ten. A bullseye thrown on nine wickets takes the one the innings had left, not two: an innings is ten and it cannot go past ten. The rest of that turn is dead, and the roles swap when the turn ends.
THE INNINGS
Whoever throws first bats first — that is the host in a game you set up yourself, but in a tournament or league match it is whoever the app seated first; check the board. The batter and the bowler take alternate turns. When the tenth wicket falls the innings is over, the wicket count resets to zero, and the two of you swap roles. Every innings opens with its batter, so at the swap the incoming batter throws first and the outgoing one picks up the darts to bowl. Both of you get a turn of your own innings before a wicket can fall in it — the second batter is not made to watch a bowling turn go in first. Both innings must be bowled out. There is no chase and no early finish: even if the second batter has already passed the first batter's total, the bowler still has to take all ten wickets before the game is over. There is no round limit either, and the setup screen does not offer one: the game plays until both innings have been bowled out, however many turns that takes, because a result cut off at a round count would judge one batter on a short innings or before they had batted at all.
WINNING
Whoever scored more runs in their own batting innings wins. If the two totals are level, the game is a tie and the app records no winner — there is no tie-break. The app does not end the game by itself; the host presses End Game. If the host ends before the second innings has been bowled out, the app falls back to the running score column — that column is each player's runs, so it does name whoever is ahead on runs. What it cannot do is finish the innings for you: a batter still to be bowled out is being judged on a short one. Bowl both innings out and let the result stand on its own.
ENTERING SCORES
Every turn is entered dart by dart. A turn typed as a bare total is refused: a bowling total cannot say whether a dart was a bull or a 20, and the bull is the bowler's whole game. Enter one, two or three darts and use Miss for the rest. The app reads your role from the board, not from what you tap: a dart entered while you are bowling is read as bowling, whatever number it is on, and a dart entered while you are batting counts towards your turn total wherever it landed.
CORRECTIONS
A correction typed as a number is refused — the runs and the wickets come from the darts. Undo works on the board: it removes the last turn completely and replays without it, so whatever it scored comes back off and the turn can be thrown again. Correcting the turn to 0 takes the runs back too, but leaves the turn on the record as thrown. A turn the clock forfeited is the clock's own record: neither you nor the host can undo it or correct it afterwards. The running score column an early End reads is re-folded along with it, so a corrected innings is never left being ranked on runs that have been taken back.
THE CLOCK
A turn clock only auto-forfeits in ranked online games. When it runs out the turn is recorded as three misses — no runs, no wickets — and play moves on. Local games are honor-system.
PLAYERS
Exactly two. The app will not let you start with one, both setup screens hold you to two, and a third player trying to JOIN is refused by the server, as is a game created with three in it. Keep it to two. Nobody can be taken out of a live game here, either: two players IS the game, and one innings is not a match. If someone has to leave, end the game.
HOUSE RULES THIS APP DOES NOT PLAY
No governing body publishes English Cricket — we went through the tournament rulebooks, on both sides of the Atlantic, and not one of them mentions the game — so Chuck Darts plays what the published hobby descriptions AGREE on, and everything above is that agreement: the turn total over 40 counting the whole board including the bull, one wicket for the outer bull and two for the bullseye, ten wickets to an innings, the swap, and most runs winning. Until 2026 this app scored 15 to 20 only with no threshold and halved the wicket scale, which is why you may remember it differently. Three things are still Chuck Darts's own, because no description settles them. A TIE records no winner and there is no tie-break — no reference we could find says what to do, so neither does the app. Some houses bowl an innings out in NINE wickets; this app is fixed at ten. And some count only the darts that hit a scoring bed towards the over-40 total; this app counts the whole turn, every dart, which is what both descriptions we followed describe. If your venue wants one of those, agree it out loud before the first dart — the app will still score the version above.