Going for the 9

An ongoing joke among the Popped Collars chaps is to challenge each other to “Go for the 9!” - which is to go out to bat and attempt to get out via all 9 different types of wicket that exist in Indoor Cricket. The 9 ways are: bowled, caught, stumped, run-out, LBW, third-ball, hit-wicket, interference, mankad.

There are 4 types that are far-and-away the most common wicket types: caught, run-out, bowled and stumped. The other 5 are rarities.

No one has yet seriously attempted the feat, but today's question-of-the-week arose from the idea of seeing who has gone the closest...

Who has been out in the most different ways in a single innings?

But not only that... let's also expand the question to look at teams and pairs as well as individuals, and to look at careers as well as single matches.

The original question gives quite an unexciting answer. The biggest variety by a batsman in a single innings is 4 wicket-types. It’s happened 9 times. No one has done it twice. Sanjit, Xavier, A.Pearson and A.Ragg are the 4 Popped Collars players to do it, the other 5 were opposition players.

No improvement to this number is made if you count both innings of players who batted twice in a match.

Looking at team performances in a match - the best effort is 5 wicket-types. Achieved four times, twice by PC, twice by opposing teams. In fact, there has never even been more than 5 wicket-types in an entire match (counting the complete innings of both teams).

And so we move on to careers...

Playing for the Popped Collars, Sanjit leads the way, having been victim to 6 different wicket-types. Brad and Jake have 5.

For teams in a career. Popped Collars batsmen have been out 6 different ways (so Sanjit covers all our efforts on his own), and no other team has more than 5 in their games against us.

What about bowlers? 

X, G, Julian, Rian and Jake have managed to claim 5 wicket-types with their bowling. Rian has a hit-wicket, Jake an Interference, and the other three have struck through a third-ball rule (in addition to the 4 standard ways).

Overall - counting everything that has happened in all PC games - there have been 8 wicket-types. Mankad is the only wicket-type that is missing. There have been attempts, there have been warnings, there have been umpires not looking, and umpires not game to give it... there have even been batsmen sitting down; but there has been no successfully completed mankad so far. Having said that now, I look forward to seeing one happen this week.

Check out the 'Stat of the week' list on the right for a breakdown of occurrences of wickets.