Eventful Innings

First things first - I'm moving house this week, and so the cricket scorecards are all packed away, and so I'm still using stats that are a few weeks behind. But that's fine.

This week's question comes from someone on the team. I don't remember who, and it took me a long time to remember what it was. The question was this:

Who has been out the most times while still mangaging to make a positive score?

So we are looking for innings containing both many wickets and many runs. Eventful innings. Let's start from the top of the "most wickets lost" list and see when we find our first positive score...

8 wickets
Let's start at the very bottom of the pile - the most times a person has been out in an innings is 8. That was by our mate Bren, from the Boonies. He has also played for us a few times, but fortunately he was playing against us on the day he racked up a total of -30.

7 wickets
A few people have managed to lose 7 wickets - Sanjit and Jake are the only offenders from the Popped Collars - and in one instance, a bloke going by the name "Jarvo" managed to finish with a score of -2. So close to the record we're looking for. He faced 16 balls that day, meaning he racked up 33 runs off his 9 non-wicket balls.

6 wickets
However we have to drop to the 6-wicket list before we find a positive score. Aidan (from the team Just 1 More) and Simon (Big 4 Bandits) managed to make scores of 1 and 3 respectively despite losing 6 wickets.

Both of them were mainly helped by facing a lot of balls (18 and 19 respectively). In Simon's case, he faced 4 extras (including a no-ball hit for 7) and scored an overthrow to hog the strike some more.

5 wickets
Looking at the next teir (5-wickets) we find what I believe are the two most impressive performances. Both B.Lockley and A.Pearson have had a turn at losing 5 wickets in an innings, while managing to make totals above 20!

This means both of them hit almost 50 runs... and then lost more than half. Brad actually made it to 3/19 in two overs. Pearson faced only 17 balls including 5 wickets and 6 back-net shots.

The Reverse situation
So what about this:

What is the least number of wickets lost while still making a negative score?

That dubious honour goes to Phil's Floggers player, Darren. 2 wickets lost, and a total score of -1. And he didn't even get out on the jackpot ball! He faced 14 balls: 2 wickets, 5 dots, 5 singles, 2 twos.

For Popped Collars, Sanjit is close to this record, having acheived a 2/0. A player for the Boonies has also done a 2/0 which included hitting a five!