Stumpings and Negative-tens

Last week's match brought about a few unusual things. Popped Collars made scores of 58, 56, 54 in their three skins. Brad and Xavier teamed up for a hat-trick of stumpings, and there were three other stumpings during the innings. And Popped Collars took a wicket on each of the three double-score balls, wiping 30 runs off the opposition's total. We also had a record-equaling 11th consecutive win.

Here is collection of quick stats about these intriguing numbers.

Wickets on double-score balls
In the Kaleen competition, the last ball of each pair scores double-runs. And double the negative score for losing a wicket. Last week, Raji Royal managed to hit two of these balls straight back to the bowler, getting run out - and the last ball of their innings was a freakish caught behind.

Previously, the Weston competition also had a double-run ball for each batting pair - but it was the first ball. In 103 matches (206 innings) at Weston, there was never an instance of 4 wickets falling off the 4 double-balls. Therefore, last week was the first time there has been a clean sweep in an innings.

Of course, it is much tougher to get 4-out-of-4, compared to 3-out-of-3.

There were 4 occasions where 3 double-wickets fell. Twice with us batting, twice with us bowling. But never the full set.

Hat-tricks of the same wicket
Thanks to some bizarre batting by a fellow named Ali, Brad claimed a hat-trick, all of which were stumped. Ali took guard out of his crease, and made no attempt (or perhaps a very half-hearted attempt) to get back when he missed the ball.

This is the first time that we have seen three consecutive stumpings in a Popped Collars game.

Previously, there have been hat-tricks of:

• Run Out
• 4 times by our batters
• 2 by our fielders
• Caught
• Once by our batters (Andy & Jake)
• 6 times by our bowlers/fielders
• Bowled
• The only occurrence of this was a team-hat-trick, with Xavier bowling the first ball, and Andy taking the next two.

Stumpings in an Innings

Helped by the hat-trick, there were 6 stumpings all up in the match last week. This is not a record - that stands at 8 - but compared to the length of the innings, it is an equal record. 

The occasions that we've seen 8  in an innings were all in 8-a-side matches, so the record is 2 per skin, which is the same as taking 6 in a 6-a-side game.

Consistent batting pairs

Take a look back at the blog entry from a few weeks ago. Back then, the record for consistent batting performances within the team was 18 runs difference between the best and worst score. Last week, we set a new mark with our min and max being 22 (Evan) and 34 (Brad)... just 12 runs the difference.

While we didn't look at skin scores in that previous write-up, I'd be pretty confident that our skin totals of 58, 56 and 54 would also set a new consistency record... I'll have to confirm that in a future week.

Consecutive Wins

The Popped Collars take on their old mates, The Groms, this week. If the Collars can get up for a win, it will officially be a new record winning streak... more on that in next week's entry...