Representative Cricket... a grade below

Round 2 of the 2010 Super League, and Weston Blast were looking for more players, and Popped Collars players were again the target of the "selectors". Brad this week made his debut, joining 1-match vetrans Xavier and Andy. But this week their services were required in division 3 - one level below what the boys played last week.

And what a difference one grade made!

Division 2 seemed a competition that truly involved the most skilled of players from the various cricket centres. Both the Weston and Goulburn team involved in last weeks matches were composed of players that even the best of the Popped Collars would have (or did) only just have the skills to be competitive - and the Lyneham team on the court next door (of which I know most of the players) would have been even better than both of us.

Division 3 was... well... laughable. Quite literally as far as I was concerned; I spent a lot of time between balls chuckling at the goings on. Both the Weston team we were playing for and the Kambah team we were playing against would have been (or were) better off having even the weakest of the Popped Collars players on board. The overall quality of the game was below what we experience every week in the standard Monday night competition.

Brad's concerns about his bowling were irrelevant as he continually beat the bat and picked up wickets. Andy was bowling too quick for anyone to get onto properly. Mis-fields went by without concern or comment, as it was the norm. Brad and Xavier put on a partnership of 69 without ever getting above about 2nd gear.

Weston won the game, but if the match was representative of the rest of the grade, the Popped Collars could take them all down and win this competition any day.

Representative Cricket

Last Friday night a phone call came in asking Xavier and Andy to play for the Weston team in the ACT Super-League competition. For the uninformed, this is a competition between the various indoor cricket centres in the region (Lyneham, Weson, Kambah and Goulburn) - ideally consisting of the "best" players from each centre. It's played in 3 grades with centres able to enter multiple teams per division if they want.

This was not the most ordinary way to be spending a Saturday night, but Xavier and Andy accepted the invitation (aka selection) and showed up to give it a go. The match was a low-scoring encounter in the 'twos' (ie second division) competition against the team from Goulburn, under the watchful eye of everyone's favourite Lyneham umpire, Dean. Weston Blast were victorious 70-45.

Pre-game, the Popped Collars boys gleaned much amusement from the team huddles that were taking place after each over and/or wicket... and more amusement when they realised that their own team would be doing it as well! Indeed, the games and teams were/are even more serious than Brad or Jake at their most serious. Xavier took a few attempts to work out what the boys were chanting at the break-up of each of the huddles (turned out it was "Blast!", the team name). Andy, meanwhile, did know the correct exclamation, but decided to mix it up a bit by saying whatever other rhyming word he could come up with at the time... "Fast!"... "Last!"... "Cast!"...

For the record, Andy bowled 3/5 and Xavier 4/-6 with two absolute sitters also dropped off his bowling... no fielders names shall be mentioned, but Andy did comment after the game that he now "knows how Sanjit feels" having been placed fielding at point, and forced to deal with balls bouncing out of the corners. They then scored 2 and 4 respectively with the bat in a failed attempt to chase a skin of 13. The bowlers were no better than the good bowlers that the Popped Collars would encounter week to week, but the new challenge was dealing with a full team of good fielders, in strategic and well placed fielding locations.

The best demonstration of this was the final ball they faced, which Xavier punched to the side net for a safe two, to tie the skin. That is, it would have been safe in any regular game - but on this occasion, the fielder in close jumped up and batted the ball back to the 'keeper for a direct hit with one stump to aim at. Andy was short of his ground and the expected tied skin turned into a 7-run loss.

Good times, but Saturday night and $17 a game... not something to be done too regularly... espeically when one is already playing Friday and Monday nights as it is!

Jake's Question Of The Week

The Popped Collars tonight dished up the first loss of the season for arch rivals 4-Skins. Arch rivals... perhaps. Or perhaps one could call us their 'bogey team'. The last time they lost a game was the grand final last season.

As the Popped Collars were out chasing down the 120 required for victory, Jake was on the sidelines asking the hard-hitting questions. Never has he been one to shy away from controversy, and tonight was no exception as he posed: "Has Brad done anything useful recently?"

Questioning the form of the captain... dangerous territory. What do the stats tell us?

In the last 3 games, our fearless leader has the following figures:
Batting: 5, 12, 11
Bowling: 3/2, 0/28, 3/16
Contribution: +3, -16, -5

I will leave it to you, good reader, to judge for yourself. Personally, I think 3/2 are "useful" bowling figures from tonight's game.

Last week, Brad also bowled an extra over, which brought 0/5, and allowed him to join the "5 dot balls" club - an elite list of people who have bowled a single over containing 5 dot-balls. Due to the 'third dot ball' rule of indoor cricket, the most it is possible to bowl in an 8-ball-over is 6. No one has yet achieved this maximum in Popped Collars history.

The 5-dot-balls have been bowled by Gareth (twice), Andy, Rian, Julian, Brad, and Xavier (who did it in his second over of tonight). No opposition bowler has done it against us yet.

7 sevens. And more sevens.

A couple of weeks ago the Popped Collars racked up a big win (237-87), with only 6 players, over “6 & Out” (the team one of our occasional subs, Matt, plays for). After the game I noted in an email to team-mates a few records that we appeared to have set during the game. With my stats not up to date, however, I was unable to confirm that they were in fact records. I will do this now...

Potential record #1
Most sevens in a match by the team (14)
Status: Confirmed

Prior to this game, the most sevens we’ve hit in an innings is 12... and the most a team has hit against us is also 12... and they were both in the same game. Unfortunately for our opponents on that day (“Just 1 More”), they also fell victim to the most wickets we’ve taken in an innings (26), and we beat them 231-104.

Potential record #2
Most sevens in an over (4)
Status: Confirmed

Rian and Andrew (Pearson) not only slapped 4 of them off the final over of the innings, but in fact hit them from the final 5 balls of the innings (7,7,2,7,7). The only other time we’ve seen 4 sevens in an over was in the first game after our grand final win when we had a century partnership scored against us. In the final over of that partnership Sanjit get taken for 35 runs - including 3 sevens and an eight.

Potential record #3
Most sevens in a match by a player (7)
Status: Confirmed

Now this could be considered a bit dodgy by some, as Pearson batted twice in the match. But nevertheless, you can’t argue that hitting 7 sevens in a match is quite impressive. He hit 4 of them in his first bat, almost making our teams top score for the day, and then went in to bat a second time and racked up 3 more. The next best in a match (and also the equal-best in a single bat) is 4.

Potential record #4
Highest individual score without hitting a seven (38)
Status: Confirmed

While everyone else was hitting sevens, Xavier was taking the opposite approach. He hit 3 side-backs and 2 fives in his 38 runs, but never a seven. This beats the old record of 36 by 2 runs. The score of 36 has actually been made 9 times in Popped Collars matches, and 4 of those times have been seven-less.

Special mention here must go here to Andy, the owner of one of those old scores of 36 which I note still holds another, similar but more impressive, record. His particular 36 consisted of no back net scores at all! He faced:  3 dot-balls, 2 singles, 4 twos, 6 threes and 4 extras. The second best back-net-less score is 31.

On with the stats

Indeed, I have been a bit slack on the ol' stats recently. I've always been thinking that I need to build the X-treme Stats program more and more, but doing that takes a lot of time, which I don't usually have. So I've decided to take a new approach. I will still endeavor to upgrade the program when I can, but I will also be handing out all sorts of interesting numbers here, inspired by events and achievements in recent games, recent records, or whatever other random things I feel like looking at for the week.

After getting a bit behind the times over the change-of-season, I've now updated my database with all the Popped Collars matches. The GG team info is still in the form of a pile of scorecards on my desk at the moment. So for the time being, stats will only come from the original team.

If you still want to use the X-treme Stats program, I've uploaded the latest data file. So you can still check out  your up-to-date graphs and basic stats. See the link at the top right of the blog.

For now, I shall set to work compiling my first batch of awesome stats, facts and lists for you, which shall appear in the coming days.

And just like Steven, from at the CricInfo website, feel free to send me your Popped Collars related questions.