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...

For this blog, I'm assuming all extras are wides, and I'm just going to call them wides. No-balls also count, because there is no record of what the no-ball was for, but almost all of them are for 'off the pitch'... that is, for being wide.

Let's start with Sanjit's over. 7 wides out of 8 balls. Is it a record? Here's the list:

Most extras in one over

Date	Bowler	Team	Wides In Over
26/9/11	Dan	Can't Bat Can't Bowl	7
1/11/13	Sanjit	Popped Collars	7
17/5/10	Jason	Pidge's Coupe	6
27/9/10	Julian	Popped Collars	6
16/4/10	Lawzo	ASN	6
27/2/12	Gareth	Popped Collars	6
31/1/11	Tim B	SNAFU	6

Sanjit was indeed the first Popped Collar to bowl 7 in one over, beating Gareth and Julian's efforts of 6, and equaling the 7 bowled by some guy from an apparently aptly named team.

None of the entries in that list above come from a last over of an innings. So there were no rebowled balls. All of those numbers are from just 8 deliveries.

Sanjit bowled only 2 other wides in his first over of the match as well, taking his overall tally to 9. This is probably not enough to be a record. Or is it...?

Most extras bowled by a player in one match

Date	Bowler	Team	Wides In Match
2/11/09	Russ	Boonies	11**
20/3/12	Xavier	Popped Collars	10*
19/7/10	Alec	Popped Collars	10*
16/4/10	Lawzo	ASN	9
1/11/13	Sanjit	Popped Collars	9
7/12/09	Quail	Boonies	9*

Each star above represents one additional over was bowled by that player. Russ, who bowled a record 11 wides actually had to bowl 4 overs to get there. That means that Sanjit's 9 is in fact a record. It is the most wides in a match by a Popped Collars player in two overs. The others that are higher took place across three overs of bowling.

Team Efforts
In the intro I also mentioned the "team effort" of 12 wides in 17 balls. Let's see what else we similar efforts we can find. I don't really know of a simple way to rank these, so I'm just going to list some interesting things I found:

Sanjit's 6 in a row is the equal most. Both by a player, and by a team. There has never been 7 or more, even across one over to the next.

Prior to last week, the most in any 17 consecutive balls by a team was 10. That had been been done twice, both by opposing teams. The previous Popped Collars record was 9 in 17 balls.

The shortest amount of time over which a team had previously bowled 12 wides was 21 balls. We went 4 balls better than that.

Can't Bat Can't Bowl sent down another wide the first ball after Russ' over listed above. That gave them 8 wides in 9 balls (88.9%). Apart from selections of balls surrounding that, our 12 in 17 balls (70.6%) is the next highest ever. It is far and away the "best" performance for a period of time longer than 2 overs.

Team In A Match
As well as having a high density of wides for a period of time, there were many other extras bowled by us last week. Our overall tally for the match was 27. That's an average of 2.25 per over.

Most extras in an innings

Date	Team	Wides In Match
24/1/11	Take That	34
14/9/09	Just 1 More	33
27/9/10	Popped Collars	33
16/5/11	Take That	30
27/2/12	Popped Collars	28
1/11/13	Popped Collars	27*
1/2/10	Popped Collars	26
9/7/10	Lazy Monkeys	26*
16/4/10	ASN	26*
6/12/10	4 Skins	26

In this table, a star indicates a 6-a-side game. We have again set a record!

Most extras-per-over

Date	Team	Wides	Wides per over
1/11/13	Popped Collars	27*	2.25
9/7/10	Lazy Monkeys	26*	2.17
16/4/10	ASN	26*	2.17
24/1/11	Take That	34	2.13
14/9/09	Just 1 More	33	2.06
27/9/10	Popped Collars	33	2.06
30/8/13	Stumpers	24*	2.00

...and also for the overall wides in a match if you account for different length games using wides-per-over

Despite such a bowling performance, we were still able to bat well enough to win the game by 3 runs.

That's all for this week...

Be sure to tune in next time for a very special edition of the Popped Stats blog!!!