Scram Cricket rules: one scores, one shuts the board
Scram is Cricket with the two jobs split. One player is the scorer and piles up points; the other is the stopper and closes the numbers to take those points away for good. When the last number shuts, the half is over — and then you swap.
How it works
Scram is played on Cricket’s board: 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15 and the Bull. Three marks shut a number — a single is one mark, a double two, a treble three — and the Bull counts as an ordinary number, outer for one mark and inner for two.
The difference is that only one player is closing. The stopper throws at the numbers to shut them: twenty-one marks in all, and nothing they throw ever scores a point.
The scorer throws at whatever is still open, and every mark pays its face value. A treble 20 while the 20 is open is three marks of twenty — 60 points. A mark on the Bull is 25, so an inner bull is 50. A dart on a number the stopper has already shut is worth nothing at all, to either of them.
The scorer throws first each half. The moment the stopper puts the twenty-first mark on the board the half ends on the spot, whatever was left in the scorer’s hand.
The swap, and how it is won
Then the roles change over: the scorer becomes the stopper, the board is wiped clean, and the second half runs exactly the same way.
At the end, the two scoring halves are compared and the bigger one wins. Nothing else counts — not how fast you closed, not how many marks you wasted.
That makes it a game about two different clocks. As the scorer you are racing the other player’s arm, and as the stopper you are shutting the numbers in the order that hurts most: the 20 first if they can find it, the Bull last if they cannot.
It is a two-player game, exactly two, which is what makes it the best darts game on this board for a quiet night with one other person.
Why it beats a leg of Cricket
In standard Cricket both players are closing and scoring at once, so a bad visit is just a bad visit. In Scram every dart has one job, and a wasted one is obvious.
It is also the fairest handicap-free game here: both players get exactly one turn as the scorer, on a board of the same seven numbers, so the only asymmetry is who closes faster.
House rules this board plays
The part no other rules page has, because no other site implements them. Each one opens the setup screen with that rule already set.
- Mickey Mouse’s board Twelve up to twenty plus the Bull — ten numbers, thirty marks for the stopper, so the scorer’s half runs a good deal longer and the low numbers stop being a safe place to hide. Set it up →
- A Wildcard draw Six numbers drawn on the setup card, plus the Bull, and shown before the first dart. Nobody has practised the board, and the stopper has to work out which of them to shut first. Set it up →
- The classic six Fifteen through twenty and the Bull — twenty-one marks, the board every league plays Cricket on. This is what the game sets up as. Set it up →
Common questions
- What is Scram Cricket? Cricket with the two jobs split: one player scores on the numbers that are still open while the other closes them, and the half ends the moment the last number shuts.
- How many players does Scram Cricket need? Exactly two. The roles swap at half time, the board is wiped, and the bigger of the two scoring halves wins.
- Does the stopper score anything in Scram? Nothing at all. The stopper throws twenty-one marks that only take numbers away, and a dart on a number already shut is worth nothing to either player.
Play it
Scram Cricket is one of the twenty modes in Friendly Fire Casper, a free darts scoreboard that runs in a browser and keeps working when the wifi drops. It scores the game for you, undoes the dart you typed wrong, remembers who won, and can put the board on a TV while everybody scores from their own phone.