Biggest Chokes - Batting

After a super effort in the field, and then an opening partnership of 71 from Julian and Xavier, Popped Collars were in a position from which they surely should have stormed home for a comfortable win. But things fell apart. Badly. Rather than the remaining batting pairs putting on the required 35 runs, they instead totaled -1. Was this the biggest ever choke by the Collars?


The other obvious rival for "biggest choke" is the game earlier this year in which Rian and Gareth slammed 108 runs in the opening 4 overs, in pursuit of a total of 158.

When batting second, the Popped Collars have played three games in which the required run rate has dropped below 4.00, and they have then failed to win. Here they are...

#3 - The most famous of the failures, but surprisingly only ranking at #3. I'm talking about the "Rian scores 77" game. The story is well known... Take That scored 158. Rian and Gareth made 108 for the first skin. When they came off the court, we needed just 44 runs off 96 balls - a required run rate of 3.75.

#2 - This is a long-forgotten game from back in the old days. Well, July last year. It was against our old foes, 4 Skins. They made a challenging total of 161, but we looked well and truly on track with some solid partnerships first up, including a 66 from Brad and Gareth. With one pair to bat the target was 23. Admittedly our sub-of-the-week, Alec, was docked 5 runs for a non-matching shirt, and the 4 Skins got to choose a batter to go with him (not that they had an obvious choice given the consistent performances we had put in up until that point of the game).

The high point of the game was 3 balls before the end of the 3rd skin when the equation was 15 to win from 35 balls. A required run-rate of 3.66. From there it really was all downhill. A wicket and not many runs to finish off the third pair, a shirt penalty enforced as the fourth pair came out, and then a horrendous 4/-18 over to start them off. Alec and Jake never recovered, and the 4 Skins took the game.

#1 - But unfortunately, the record for "biggest choke" was indeed broken this week. At one point in our run chase the required rate got down to a measly 2.61 runs per over. Xavier and Julian had knocked off 71 of ASG's 104 run total, and Brad had punched the first ball of his skin for a double-two. This left us with the seemingly-un-losable scenario of 30 runs required off 95 balls. Instead, those 95 balls brought a grand total of -5, including four negative individual scores out of the remaining six batters.


I have to sort out a few issues with my database adding up running totals, but I will soon also be doing "Biggest Chokes - Bowling". The biggest run-rates that we have allowed an opposing team to chase down.