A ball log is the innings in its rawest form.

It's a sequential record of every delivery faced: dots, singles, twos, boundaries, and the wicket, shown in the exact order they happened. No summaries. No smoothing. Just the full trail of the knock, ball by ball.

How to Read One

Each ball appears as a symbol or number:

• 0 or a dot = no run
• 1, 2, 3 = runs taken
• 4, 6 = boundaries (usually highlighted)
• W = wicket

In The Knock, we colour-code the sequence so patterns jump out: dots in one colour, singles in another, boundaries in brighter shades. You should be able to feel the innings at a glance.

Think of it as the innings' timeline. Or its fingerprint.

What It Reveals

Because it's granular, the ball log tells you things a scorecard can't:

• Strike rotation: lots of 1s and 2s means a batter keeping the game moving
• Pressure: long dot-ball sequences mean bowlers in control and risk building
• Boundary bursts: clusters of 4s and 6s show a hitter finding timing or targeting a bowler
• Risk moments: the balls before a wicket often explain why it happened, stuck in dots, forced to go, or out mid-attack
• Phases: watchful start, middle-overs management, late-overs launch, especially in T20s

How The Knock Uses It

The wagon wheel shows where the runs went. The Manhattan shows when they came over by over. The ball log shows how they arrived, delivery by delivery.

Even simple patterns can narrow the search fast. "0, 0, 1, 0, 4, 6" feels like a batter absorbing pressure then breaking free. "4, 1, 4, 2, 6, 4" feels like someone attacking from ball one. Those rhythms are hard to fake, and they're often unique to a specific kind of innings.

Ball Log vs Scorecard

A scorecard gives you the headline: 87 off 53, 9 fours, 3 sixes.

A ball log gives you the story. Two innings can have identical totals and boundary counts but completely different paths, a steady climb vs a late blitz, an even tempo vs stop-start bursts. That's why it works so well in a puzzle: it captures the flow, not just the final numbers.