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.

Consecutive Batting Pairs
Beginning with the batting, let's check out the difference in scores for consecutive pairs. NDC came up with a difference of over 100 from one pair to the next - something which has happened only once before. Before last week, the record stood at a monstrous 124 runs. I say 'monstrous' because it was an enormous 40 runs more than the second highest! After this most recent game, we have a performance to break up that giant gap.

Here's the list:

Team	Pair and score	Next pair	Difference
Popped Collars	Gareth & Rian 108	Sanjit & Matt -16	124
NDC	Brock & Trent 82	Darren & Mitch -23	105
Popped Collars	Julian & Xavier 71	Brad & Sanjit -13	84
Popped Collars	Rian & Xavier 100	Andy & Evan 17	83
Take That	Ollie & Joe 47	Pete & Jezza -32	79
Popped Collars	Gareth & Rian 98	Andy & Jim 19	79
Popped Collars	Andy & Jake 24	Brad & Xavier 101	77
Popped Collars	Andy & Gareth -3	A.Pearson & Brad 66	69
Four Skins	Richo & Southo 73	Haysie & Rob 4	69
Popped Collars	Brad & Xavier 101	Andy & Sanjit 33	68

The leading entry comes from this classic game two years ago.

Eight of the top ten entries here have the second pair scoring less. It seems far more common for a bad pair to follow a good one that the other was around. Rarely does a great score come directly after a much lower one.

Perhaps it's a psychological thing: it's hard to make a big score when the guys before you came up with nearly nothing - or - getting complacent and making a crap score is easy when the guys before you did really well.

Also note there are two entries in that list which followed straight on from each other - the 7th and 10th items in those list were part of a trio of skins that went 24, 101, 33. I remember that innings - it wasn't that we got to face the team's worse bowlers, we just had one of those days where everything came off for both of us.

At the other extreme of this stat, what about consecutive pairs of the same score? There are 12 example of this happening, the highest being a pair of 70s. We are yet to see two very low scores in this list.

Occurrences of consecutive pairs making the same score

Team	Pair	Next pair	Score
Popped Collars	Rian & Jim	Andy & Jake	70
Popped Collars	Gareth & Rian	Xavier & Andy	68
Popped Collars	Julian & Xavier	Sanjit & Brad	59
4 Skins	James & Ben	Danny & George	43
Popped Collars	Brad & Sanjit	Rian & Gareth	36
Popped Collars	Andy & James	Matt SBrad	36
Popped Collars	Brad & Sanjit	Rian & Matt	33
Them Again	Tim & Dave	Scott J & Nate	32
Popped Collars	Brad & Sanjit	Andy & Matt	30
Popped Collars	Julian & Xavier	Brad & Sanjit	26
S.N.A.F.U	Timmy & Benji	Kaine & Dom	26
4 Skins	Jingles & Mick	Chris & James	21

Bowling
Thanks to the inconsistent batting pairs, Gareth bowled two overs last week whose results were separated by 45 runs. Once again, this is a second-best performance. A couple of years ago Jake went 1 run better, bowling his two overs for -17 and 29. And he actually did it the week directly after the 70 run partnerships mentioned in the previous table. Clearly he was trying to make up for too much consistency in the previous game.

Note that with this stat I've only counted the first two overs a player bowls each match. Any extra overs bowled (because the team is short of players) are ignored.

Team	Bowler	Runs from overs bowled	Difference
Popped Collars	Jake	-17, 29	46
Popped Collars	Gareth	38, -7	45
501	Nick L	25, -19	44
Popped Collars	Julian	-13, 29	42
Popped Collars	Jake	18, -24	42
Big 4 Bandits	John	27, -15	42
Stimulated	Matt C	38, -4	42
Popped Collars	Gareth	28, -12	40

Again, a quick mention of the other extreme. A bowler has had the same number of runs taken off each of his two overs on 88 occasions. Therefore, on average we see someone do it every fortnight or so.

The standouts in consistent bowling come from Andy with a couple of -11 overs, and Dylan (from 4Skins) who once bowled a pair of -10 against us.

The worst are both by opposition players, including - once again! - our old mate Gibbo. In that classic game last December where he suffered 3 overs 0/72, his two regular overs were both 0/21 before his additional over went for 30.

For the Popped Collars bowlers, Brad holds both first and second place with 19 and 17. The captain following a bit of philosophy that players normally apply to umpires: "if you're going to be bad, at least be consistent".

Best and worst bowling performances where both overs went for the same runs

Team	Opponents	Bowler	Score in both overs
Team Freak	Popped Collars	Matt	22
The Groms	Popped Collars	Gibbo	21
Popped Collars	Rebels	Brad	19
Phil's Floggers	Popped Collars	Stef	18
S.N.A.F.U	Popped Collars	Panda	18
--------	--------------	-------	---
Popped Collars	Just 1 More	Brad	-2
Big 4 Bandits	Popped Collars	Andy	-2
Popped Collars	Mild Heat	Gareth	-2
Popped Collars	Pidge's Coupe	Andy	-3
4 Skins	Popped Collars	Dylan	-10
Popped Collars	The Wingmen	Andy	-11