Continuing from last week, where we looked at the glory of bowling third-balls, it's now time to look at the unfortunate business of having to face them while in bat.
This is pretty much going to be a copy and paste of last week with the batting stats and commentary in place of the bowling ones.
Let's start simple, and just count the number of "third balls" that each Popped Collars player has created while batting Back in the day, at Weston, with double-score applying on the first ball of each skin, it was possible to create a third-ball by bowling a dot on this "power ball".
This table shows how many times a batter has contributed to a third-ball scenario in three different ways:
1. Facing two consecutive dot balls
2. Facing a dot ball on a double-score
3. Facing a dot ball which came directly before or after a dot ball faced by his batting partner (i.e. in the previous, or next, over).
| Batter | Two Dots | Double-score dot | One out of two dots |
| Andy | 37 | 14 | 10 |
| Brad | 26 | 13 | 4 |
| Gareth | 46 | 12 | 5 |
| Jake | 20 | 5 | 5 |
| Julian | 17 | 4 | 5 |
| Matt | 43 | 1 | 3 |
| Rian | 15 | 7 | 5 |
| Sanjit | 60 | 4 | 5 |
| Xavier | 38 | 7 | 7 |
The only noteworthy thing I can see here is that Matt is the lord of the two dot balls. Despite having played the least games of all the players in the list, he comes in third on the count in the first column. Almost 1 per innings he bats in.
The next table down is the player-by-player summary. The first column shows how many times they have faced a third-ball. (Note this is not the same as the the last table, which showed when they faced the dot balls - this time we see when they faced the ball that they had to score off, irrespective of who caused the dot balls that preceded it).
The other columns show the percentage of time that various things happen on the third-balls they face. Also note that this often adds up to more than 100% because it's quite common to have an extra and take a run as well (especially on third-balls, when the batters will be looking for a quick run).
| Batters | Third-Balls faced | Back Net % | 1,2,3 runs % | Extras % | Wickets % |
| Andy | 56 | 3.6 | 71.4 | 3.6 | 25.0 |
| Brad | 47 | 10.6 | 74.5 | 6.4 | 14.9 |
| Gareth | 61 | 3.3 | 77.0 | 8.2 | 18.0 |
| Jake | 29 | 3.4 | 75.9 | 6.9 | 20.7 |
| Julian | 25 | 12.0 | 68.0 | 8.0 | 20.0 |
| Matt | 41 | 2.4 | 80.5 | 2.4 | 17.1 |
| Rian | 26 | 3.8 | 76.9 | 7.7 | 19.2 |
| Sanjit | 57 | 3.5 | 70.2 | 10.5 | 26.3 |
| Xavier | 46 | 6.5 | 71.7 | 6.5 | 21.7 |
It seems Julian and Brad are the most aggressive when it comes to needing to score something, hitting the back net at least 10% of the time while almost everyone else is down around 3-4%. Not only that, but Brad also manages to be the best at preserving his wicket! Perhaps his batting will make up for the bowling stats that came out in last week's blog.
Again, we finish with the comparison of runs per ball scored off third-balls, and the total runs/ball for their whole Popped Collars career. The last column gives the difference between those two numbers (positive means they bat better on third-balls)
| Bowler | Runs/ball (3rdBalls) | Runs/ball (Career) | Difference |
| Andy | 0.04 | 1.16 | -1.12 |
| Brad | 1.04 | 1.43 | -0.39 |
| Gareth | 0.46 | 0.92 | -0.46 |
| Jake | 0.48 | 1.11 | -0.63 |
| Julian | 0.92 | 1.43 | -0.51 |
| Matt | 0.63 | 0.65 | -0.02 |
| Rian | 0.38 | 1.66 | -1.28 |
| Sanjit | -0.14 | 0.82 | -0.96 |
| Xavier | 0.39 | 1.43 | -1.04 |
Just like with the bowling, Matt don't seem to care what's happening, or what ball is being bowling, his stats are pretty much the same irrespective of third-ball! Everyone else has a significantly worse average when under pressure to score (which is what one should expect).
Brad has indeed made up for his bowling stats, being the only batsmen to stay above an average of 1 run per ball when under pressure. Again, I theorise that it is Brage-related. With two dot-balls faced, the Brage would have certainly built up, giving the awesome preformance-boost that we all know happens under Brage-ing conditions!
Rian has the greatest drop in performance - but then again, he has the furthest to fall, as the number 1 batter under normal conditions.
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