Friday, 7 March 2014

Debuts, comebacks, and the low ceiling

And we're back for 2014. I'll just do a couple of quick stats today that I've had in the back of my mind over the first few games of the year.

Comeback games
A few weeks ago, Matt made a return to the indoor cricket field after a long stint out through injury. He wasted no time getting back into the swing of it, taking a hat-trick off the first 3 balls he bowled. He continued that form all through his two overs, claiming 6 wickets for -22, the best bowling figures for a Popped Collars player in a comeback game.

Here is a list of some of the best performances in the first game back after a long absence (at least 100 days). Our occasional pro player, Andrew 'Crushie' Pearce, makes many appearances in these lists since he plays very infrequently, and destroys all comers whenever he does.

Best batting after a long absence
Return datePlayerDays breakScore
30 Jan 2012Crushie12654
21 Sep 2012Evan17845
26 Jun 2012Crushie14842
22 Nov 2011Matt11234
12 Dec 2011Jake21734
26 Jun 2012Jim Ragg20429

Best bowling after a long absence
Return datePlayerDays breakBowling
24 Jan 2014Matt1056/-22
26 Apr 2013Gibbo4454/-7
30 Jan 2012Crushie1263/-4

Best contribution after a long absence
Return datePlayerDays breakContribution
30 Jan 2012Crushie126+58 (54 & 3/-4)
24 Jan 2014Matt105+37 (15 & 6/-22)
21 Sep 2012Evan178+32 (45 & 2/13)

Matt's superb bowling also got him second place on the high contribution-after-a-break list above. And indeed, the highest ever by a regular team-member.


Debut performances
Last week, Dan Irvine made his debut for the Popped Collars, and impressed from the very beginning, top scoring for the team with 30 runs. Admittedly 14 came off the final (double-score) ball, which should have been -10, except that the opposition fielder made a meal of a simple run out off the back net. Irrespective of that, it was an impressive debut, with his 2-step bowling run up proving effective as well.

Here is a list of the best performances by people playing their first ever game for the team.

Best batting on debut
DatePlayerScore
28 Sep 2009Rian43
7 Feb 2011Crushie37
20 Dec 2013Andrew37
-------------------
14 Sep 2009Josh35
28 Feb 2014Dan I.30
7 Sep 2009Brad26

The top of that table is the top 3 debut scores, then there's a gap where I've skipped a whole bunch of random one-off fill ins (and, actually, "Andrew" is one of those people). The next three listed are the next best regular (or potentially regular, in Dan's case) players scores. The final one listed, Brad's 26, was the top score in the first ever Popped Collars game.

Best bowling on debut
DatePlayerBowling
7 Feb 2011Crushie6/-16
20 Jun 2011Chriso6/-16
7 Sep 2009Brad5/-14

Best contributions on debut
DatePlayerContribution
7 Feb 2011Crushie+56 (37 & 6/-16)
7 Sep 2009Brad+40 (26 & 5/-14)
20 Jun 2011Chriso+31 (15 & 6/-16)

"Chriso" listed in the last two tables is a bloke who works behind the desk at Weston that filled in for us one day when we were very short.


Sevens at Kaleen
Kaleen is known for having a much lower ceiling on their courts than other indoor cricket centres. With a handful of new players making appearances in the last few weeks, the issue has been pointed out several times recently. The standard opinion is that it's harder to hit sevens, and thus less of them are hit - but is this actually true?

Here be the stats...

Percentage of balls hit for Sevens
Venueby Popped Collarsby opponentsTotal
Weston4.96%2.97%3.97%
Lyneham5.71%3.66%4.72%
Kaleen3.54%2.37%2.96%
TOTAL4.90%3.05%3.99%

Clearly, there are less sevens hit at Kaleen, both by us and against us. The theory is proved.

Our percentage at Lyneham is undoubtedly boosted because I've included all the "GG" games as well, but even our weaker opponents in that competition hit more sevens against us than anyone does at Kaleen (the percentage by opponents in the GG season was 3.70%).

Season by season, the lowest ever percentage was last season (Winter 2013) with just 2.03% of balls hit for seven. We restricted out opponents to just 26 maximums over the course of the entire season - a superb percentage of only 1.68%. The highest ever by us was indeed in the GG season, where we put away 5.97% of balls bowled to us.

The highest number of sevens hit by us is 203 in the 2010/11 season - unsurprisingly at Weston, where the seasons just kept going until they felt like organising finals, and many of the weeks were double-headers.

3 comments:

  1. Stat-elicious blog. Welcome back!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ri, did you only make your début in 2009? I could have sworn you'd been playing longer...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The stats only started as part of the change of era; when we decided to "play serious" and named ourselves Popped Collars. Debut is just referring to first game in these stats.

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