How Many Ways Can You Get Out in Cricket? Ten in the Laws, Four That Matter

Search for how many ways can you get out in cricket and the first page of results will give you three different numbers. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. They cannot all be right, and the disagreement is not a matter of opinion. It comes from pages that have not been updated since the Laws were rewritten, and from writers padding the list because a bigger number makes a better headline.

Here is the settled answer, and then the part almost every one of those pages skips: which of the ten will ever actually happen to you.

The short answer

There are ten ways to get out in cricket under the current Laws: bowled, caught, leg before wicket, run out, stumped, hit wicket, hit the ball twice, obstructing the field, timed out, and retired out. Handled the ball was removed as a separate method in the 2017 Code and absorbed into obstructing the field, which is why older articles still count eleven. Of the ten, five account for roughly 98 percent of dismissals in Test cricket.

The five that do the work

These are the ones worth understanding properly, because between them they end almost every innings ever played. The percentages below are from Test cricket, where caught alone is responsible for more than half of all dismissals.

Caught (Law 33). The ball touches the bat or the glove holding the bat and is taken cleanly before it hits the ground. About 57 percent of Test dismissals. If you only prepare for one, prepare for this one.
Bowled (Law 32). The ball hits the stumps and dislodges a bail. It does not matter whether it touched your bat, your pad or nothing at all on the way. About 21 percent.
Leg before wicket (Law 36). The ball hits you instead of the stumps, and the umpire judges it would have gone on to hit them. Around 14 percent. The two conditions people forget: it cannot have pitched outside leg stump, and if it strikes you outside the line of off stump you are only out if you made no genuine attempt to play a shot.
Run out (Law 38). The wicket is broken while you are out of your ground attempting a run. About 3.5 percent, and the only dismissal in the top five that is entirely your own fault.
Stumped (Law 39). You step out of your crease, miss, and the keeper breaks the wicket before you get back. Roughly 2 percent. The difference between stumped and run out is simply whether you were attempting a run.

The bowler does not get credit for all of them

A detail that catches people out when they read a scorecard. Bowled, caught, leg before wicket, stumped and hit wicket all go down as wickets for the bowler. Run out, obstructing the field, hit the ball twice, timed out and retired out do not. The batter is gone either way, but the bowling figures do not move.

The five you will probably never see

They are still Laws, they still count, and you will almost certainly go your whole playing life without witnessing one.

Hit wicket (Law 35). You knock your own stumps over with bat, body or a piece of kit while playing a shot or setting off for a run. Rare, embarrassing, and usually the result of a pull shot against a fast bowler that got too close.
Obstructing the field (Law 37). You deliberately get in the way of a fielder, or handle the ball without permission. This is the Law that swallowed handled the ball in 2017.
Hit the ball twice (Law 34). You strike the ball a second time to score off it. Hitting it a second time purely to stop it rolling onto your stumps is allowed, which is the exception that makes this almost impossible to trigger by accident.
Timed out (Law 40). The incoming batter is not ready within the allowed window. The Laws set three minutes; professional playing conditions cut that down, and Angelo Mathews of Sri Lanka was given out under a two minute allowance against Bangladesh at the 2023 World Cup, the first timed out dismissal in the history of international cricket. It has happened around seven times in first-class cricket and never in a Test.
Retired out (Law 25.4). A batter leaves the field without the umpire's permission and does not come back. It goes in the scorebook as a dismissal. Retired hurt is different and is not out.

Why the count is a bad way to learn

Most people asking how many ways can you get out in cricket want a number, get one, and stop there. The list-of-ten framing is a quiz answer, not a skill. It spreads your attention evenly across ten items when the real distribution is nothing like even. A beginner who memorises obstructing the field before they understand what a good length looks like has learned a piece of trivia and no cricket.

Sort them by whether you can do anything about them instead:

Dismissals you prevent by reading the ball. Bowled and leg before wicket. Both come from misjudging line or length, and both are fixed by the same skill: deciding early whether to come forward or go back. If you get this right, two of the three biggest threats mostly disappear.
Dismissals you prevent by choosing the right shot. Caught. You are not beaten by the ball here, you are beaten by your own decision to play a shot the delivery did not deserve. Most catches come from a drive at a ball that was not full enough or a pull at one that was not short enough.
Dismissals you prevent by paying attention. Run out and stumped. No technique required. Call clearly, watch the fielder, and get your foot back behind the line.
Dismissals you can ignore. The other five. Learn the names so a scorecard never confuses you, then forget about them.

That is the honest version of how many ways can you get out in cricket. Ten in the Laws, three that you should actively be defending against, and one more, the run out, that is purely about concentration.

What each one is telling you

Every dismissal is feedback. The type matters more than the fact.

Being bowled repeatedly means you are playing the wrong line, usually leaving a gap between bat and pad. Being caught in the ring means your shot selection is ahead of your timing. Being caught on the boundary means you picked the right shot and mistimed it, which is a much smaller problem. Leg before wicket means you are playing back to balls you should be playing forward to. Getting run out twice in a session means you and your partner are not talking.

If you keep a note of how you got out over ten innings, the pattern that emerges will tell you what to work on faster than any coaching video. See the blog for the batting and bowling guides that go with each of these.

The fastest way to feel the difference

Reading about dismissals only takes you so far. You learn the difference between the ball that bowls you and the ball you should have left by facing both, a few minutes apart, from someone actively trying to get you out.

That is what a short format match gives you. On Howzat Live you play a live 1v1 against a real person in your browser, one batting and one bowling, over five, ten or twenty overs. It is free, there is nothing to download, and a five over game is short enough that you can play three of them and start seeing your own pattern.

If you would rather make your mistakes privately first, there are three bots to practise against: Gully, Club and Academy. Those results count toward your rating at half weight, are capped at a few a day, and cannot take you past Scale 3. Everything above that has to be earned against real opponents, which is also where the interesting dismissals come from, because a human bowler notices you are playing back too early and will pitch it up next ball. A bot will not.

You can create a free account to get a rated Scale badge after five matches, then check the leaderboard to find someone worth losing to, since beating a stronger opponent moves you up faster than beating a weaker one. Either way, pay attention to the how, not just the out. Ten ways exist. Four of them are coming for you.