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...

18 January
I will say nothing here of our first encounter with the Gold Diggers - there is no need, for you can read the comprehensive story of the scorecard fiasco and the blatant cheating here.

You can also click below to see the scorecard (well, this is the scorecard as it was entered into our stats... whether or not it an accurate representation of what happened will never be known)

8 March
Our second encounter was marred by the same umpire. This time, rather than a scorecard issue, it was a decision-making issue. And it led to a near walk-off. Admittedly it wasn't just the decision-making in this match, but a string of matches leading up to this. The first part of this post briefly relives the main points.

5 April
The grand final of last season. The Gold Diggers took a comfortable win, with the scorecard made to look better by some non-caring batsmen in the final over. The match was followed by a memorable presentation ceremony in which the winners and runners-up were recognised for their performances throughout the season... I think it consisted of the bloke who runs the centre wandering over to each team and saying "Here you go guys, some shirts for you"

9 August
A very comfortable loss for the Popped Collars, summed up nicely in an email from the captain the following week:

"Bad loss last Friday, some average performances and frankly, some useless batting. Disappointing as we restricted them to a par score."

This game also marked the end of the short-lived reorganisation of the batting pairs (X/G, Matt/Sanj, Brad/Ri), which had seemed to be working well for the team up until the Gold Diggers exposed its weaknesses.

This scorecard doesn't show up properly on the computer, so here's a photo of the genuine original scorecard

On second thoughts, with Dean's writing, maybe the dodgy computer one would have been better!


20 September
The 2013 grand final. The Popped Collars won the toss and got to chase - the option both teams seem to prefer. After again restricting the Gold Diggers to a gettable total, this time there was no mistake with the bat. Sensible stoke play all round and some good shots when required saw the Popped Collars pass their target with one over to play, eventually winning by 11 runs to claim the 2013 championship.

(story and scorecard TBC)