An analytical model of the stress field caused by sliding indentation of brittle materials is developed. The complete stress field is treated as the superposition of applied normal and tangential forces with a sliding blister approximation of the localized inelastic deformation occuring just underneath the indenter. It is shown that lateral cracking is produced by the sliding blister stress field and that median cracking is caused by the applied contact forces. The model is combined with an experimental volume change measurements to show that the relative magnitude of tensile stresses governing lateral crack and median crack growth varies with the magnitude of the applied load. This prediction is consistent with the different regimes of experimentally observed cracking in soda-lime glass.