200th Match

After an opposition forfeit two weeks ago, the Popped Collars next great milestone was delayed by a week. But, assuming we play tonight, we will be finishing off the year with the team's 200th game!!

Season 2013

Last post celebrated a special milestone, the 100th blog post. Next week, we will be celebrating another equally (or even more) great occasion - be sure to check it out.

In the meantime, let's fill in this week by going back to last season and checking out the stats. The season for "Summer 2013/14" has been underway for a while, but I'm yet to give the info from our premiership-winning season just gone. So that's what we'll do today.

100th Post! (and other meta-stats)

Today marks a grand milestone. I'm not talking about runs scored, wickets taken, or matches played... this, readers, is the 100th post published to the PoppedStats blog! To celebrate the occasion, today's stats are not going to be about performances on the indoor cricket court, but about the blog itself.

Wides, Wides and more Wides

Last week's match involved an over in which Sanjit may well have set a record. The over he bowler contained 7 wides (or leg-sides) out of 8 balls, including 6 in a row to start with. That over, however was just the beginning of a cracking run of wides; fill-in player Kish bowled the next over, and sent down 4 more wide deliveries, and Xavier's first ball in the over after that was also a wide, making 12 wides in the space of 17 consecutive balls. Let's check the record book...

2013 Champions

The Popped Collars are the Kaleen indoor cricket champions for 2013 after comfortably defeating the Gold Diggers in the grand final on Friday night. The match played out almost exactly as the prediction in last week's post described, but with a greater margin of victory. Following is a grand final match report, and comparison with the predicted outcome:

Popped Collars vs Gold Diggers

It's Grand Final week. The second season of Kaleen's return to hosting indoor cricket, and the same two teams as last time will contest the deciding game.

Gold Diggers have dominated this season's competition, losing just one of their 23 matches during the regular season - although they have had to fight hard for some of those wins, with their opponents getting within 10 runs on four occasions. All four of those matches, as well as their only loss, came in the second half of the season.

The Popped Collars have dominated the rest of  the competition. Excluding games against Gold Diggers, they have 15 wins from 17 matches, with only two close-fought victories (single figure margin). On top of those stats, both teams had relatively comfortable wins in their semi-finals last week.

A few weeks ago, we saw that Gold Diggers have all 4 wins in matches between the two teams. Today, we will take a brief look back at those four eventful matches as we head into tonight's big game...

Finals

It's the end of another season. Popped Collars have, once again, made the finals. Who will step up in these sudden-death, high-pressure matches? Who will be inspired by the occasion to perform well? Who will crumble under the weight of expectation? Who knows.... but we can look back, and see who has done it in the past!

The only one

During last week's game, Xavier and Gareth batted through the first pair without loss of a wicket. Brad and Rian went in next; the captain held his wicket in tact while Rian lost his 3 times. Given that Rian is statistically the team's top batsman, we thought it would be amusing if he was the only one to lose a wicket in our entire innings. Matt and Brad in the third pair made sure it didn't play out that way, but it gave me a vague idea for this week's stats.

Bunnies and bogeys

Last week the Popped Collars took on arch nemesis The Gold Diggers, and for the fourth time in four matches, the Gold Diggers came away with the win. It's not very often they go so many matches without getting the better of a particular team. Today we're looking at the Popped Collars win-loss record against individual opposing teams.

Chasing runs

This is an update and re-write of last week's blog. It was a super-hastily thrown together blog about the last batting pair chasing down big totals - or failing to get the win, despite needing to make very few runs. I'm updating it for two reasons... firstly, it was written is haste, and needed fixing. Secondly, (and ironically) one of the records listed in that blog was smashed during last week's match.

Kaleen: Season 1 Averages

I spent this week struggling to remember any unanswered stat questions, and being unable to come up with anything new and exciting. Eventually I finally realised that I haven't yet compiled last season's overall performances. So without any further ado: player performances from our first season at a new location.

Regular players and low totals

There has been some kind of technical difficulties. With this weeks article 90% written, the "edit post" webpage somehow deleted the whole thing. And because it auto-saves, I couldn't get it back! So here is a quickly re-written abbreviated version of this week's stats...

Good/Bad contributions despite a bad/good performance

This is a topic that, on several occasions, I've thought I'd already written about. But apparently I haven't. So here it is. This is all about players who do very badly in one aspect of the game (batting or bowling), but still manage to get a positive contribution. Also players who do very well in one aspect, but end up with a negative contribution.

Wicket-type specialists

As is often the case, an interesting fact from the previous game sparks a thought from someone which turns into a blog post. Last match, Xavier took 4 wickets, all of which were bowled. It has never seemed that bowling batsmen out was a strength of his, but something must have gone right for this one week. Let's extract some stats.

Runs Caused

A few weeks ago, a game was played where captain Brad led from the front with the bat, and trailed behind with the ball. He both scored and conceded more than 50 runs. What stats and records can we find with this as a starting point?

How many balls should you face?

Last time, the stats were about the number of balls each batter faced with a pair. This time, I've been asked for a more detailed variation of that theme. Today, we look at a few simple stats, such as averages and high-scores, but sort the results based on how many balls the batter faced in their innings. If that doesn't make sense, too bad, just keep reading.

Farming the strike

Sanjit and Xavier felt that they had faced very few balls while batting last week. Both less than half of the balls in their partnerships, with Rajit and Matt respectively taking most of the strike. So Sanjit asked about the records in this category. Today we'll check out number of balls faced by individuals during a batting pair, and balls faced in a row.

Umpires

Frustrated at the continual incompetence of a particular umpire over the past couple of months, Brad almost led his team in a walk-off.

Up and Down

Last week's game was a real up-and-down affair. The opposition, NDC, known for having 2 quality players and 4 not-so-quality players, lived up to their reputation. Their first pair made 82, the team total was 89, including a -23 second pair. This in turn led to Gareth's bowling figures showing overs of 38 and then -7. Did either of these two performances set some kind of inconsistency record? Today, we find out.

Who's on first?

When two batters step in to start their innings, there is always the discussion of who will face the first ball. Some like to play a quick game of Rock-Paper-Scissors, some regular pairs like to take turns, and sometimes its just a matter of whoever steps in first gets to choose an end.

Back at Weston, where the first ball is worth double runs, the decision was more important than now - but how important is it anyway? Here's the stats based on who faces the ball of each pair.

Wicket droughts

Last year there was this post about the batters who had managed to go the longest between losing a wicket. Last week, one player suggested that perhaps he was getting close to a record for the bowling equivalent - claiming he had taken no wicket for the last 3 games (which would make at least 6 overs, and probably more than 50 balls). That's what this week's stat is...

Two short stories

In addition to this week's regular blog, I'm throwing together this short post to pass on two brief stories of varying levels of interest and amusement.

Pretty pictures

With no good stat suggestions, and nothing new and exciting coming to my mind, I decided this week to draw some pretty pictures for you. I plan to not write much; rather just allow you to look for yourself and make your own observations. Or just admire the pretty colours.

Time after time

After the debacle of the first game of the year, Popped Collars suffered their second consecutive loss - this time a far more legitimate (though still very close) one. Perhaps it was Rian and Gareth colliding while taking a second run - resulting in a run out - that cost the game (it wasn't, but I just wanted to mention that incident in a blog so we can remember it for years to come). Perhaps it was the fact that we had fill-ins (we haven't lost a game this season with our usual team). Or perhaps it was the time of night (both losses were in 8:30pm games) ... that's a stat to be investigated... let's do it.

A farce, but at least it was close

Welcome to the world of the Popped Collars for 2013.

For this week, rather than listing numbers and looking up stats, I'm going to do a match report on our first match of the year, played last Friday. It was certainly one worth remembering. Firstly, because it marked the end of our 13 (or 14) match winning streak. Secondly, the blatant cheating of one of the Gold Diggers players, and the incredible level of incompetence from the umpire turned the game into a bit of a joke.

But at least the scoreline made the ending exciting.

And... even if you were at the game, this blog has a cracking surprise twist that you won't see coming. Stick around.