Not many wickets

In our most recent match, we had what can only be described as "a shocker" in the field. Catches went down all over the place, run-outs were missed, balls were fumbled. The result of this was we took only two wickets in the entire innings (also we lost the game). Both of those wickets came in the final over the match - for much of the game it looked like we would not take a wicket at all!

I've written about similar things here before, but since it is topical, here's an updated look at the stats of wickets lost by a team.

I can't be bothered finding the past posts about it... but perhaps you'd like to look yourself using the new "Labels and Topics" section on the right of the page. Use it to browse through all the old posts by topic!



1 wicket lost
We have never played a game where a team batted through without losing a wicket. The Popped Collars have twice lost only 1, and there was a GG game where the opposition lost only 1 wicket.

Given that GG dominated their competition, it may seem surprising that an opposing team did so well - but in reality, they didn't do that well at all. The scored only 126, and GG chased it down comfortably, winning by 43 runs (and losing 5 wickets along the way).

Other instances of having only 1 wicket lost were:

• Our second game at Kaleen, against Team Freak. Andy Ragg, in a special guest re-appearance, was the only man out, bowled trying to play a reverse sweep in the final over of the innings.
• A game in June last year where the only player to lose a wicket was Matt - who made it count double, being bowled off the final ball of his pair. Fortunately, it wasn't costly - we won that game by 152 runs.

2 wickets lost

Last week's game was the third occasion a team has lost only 2 wickets in an innings. The other two were by the Popped Collars - the highlight undoubtedly being that one of those games was our grand-final victory over Gold Diggers last season, helping us easily chase down the win.

The other was another early (grading) game at Kaleen. In fact, we lost only 24 wickets in our first 6 games at the current venue - an average of just 4 per game, where our overall average for 6-a-side games is 8.38.

Least in 8-a-side

All the games listed so far have been 6-a-side. Obviously it is easier to lose less wickets when the innings are shorter, and there are less fielders in place. 

The three best performances in 8-a-side matches were by our opponents, one team managed to bat through with only 4 wickets lost, and two teams managed 5. Our best is 6, and it came in one of our first games as the Popped Collars back in late 2009.

Most wickets lost

36. That's a lot. That's 4.5 wickets per player through the entire team. Unfortunately, that team was the Popped Collars. It was against one of the pro teams that we came up against at Weston on occasion. Five of our players made negative scores. Xavier (-20), Andy (-22) and Steve (-11) all made their lowest ever scores. We made a record team total of -31, and were beaten by a record 213 runs.

In 6-a-side, nothing is likely to beat the extraordinary 28 wickets lost by the drunk guys in the infamous GG match of 2010. The Popped Collars have once taken 20, and twice taken 19 wickets in a match - and all three of those performances have come in the last 3 months!

On one occasion, we lost 20 wicket in the short version of the game - that was the ridiculously low-scoring affair last year against Underarm where we failed to chase down 60.