Weston update

After a bunch of weeks without a blog, here's an update on the Popped Collars performances since making the move back to the Weston Indoor Sports Centre.

As far as team results go, it's been a disappointing (and frustrating) start to the season. Being placed straight into the A-Grade competition (which was a perfectly reasonable assumption given the team's past performances), we proceeded to be soundly beaten week after week. The weeks we weren't being beaten were the weeks we were being thrashed.

Those overseeing the competition took a lot longer to realise that we didn't belong there than we did, and we got to play (and be defeated by) every team in the top grade before being shifted down.

vs A-Grade teams
6 games : 0 won, 6 lost
Skins : 2 won, 1 tied, 21 lost
Total runs : 463 - 877

vs B-grade teams
2 games : 2 won, 0 lost
Skins : 5 won, 3 lost
Total runs : 232* - 203

* we've actually scored exactly 116 in both B-Grade games.

Highlights
There's been a few notable events and stats from the first 8 weeks...

Julian made an unexpected return to the team after an absence of 1 year, 8 months and 1 day.

Brad made his lowest score: -25 (sorry, Brad, had to get a mention). That easily beats his previous -13 against our old foes '4skins' from the old days at Weston.

On May 6, Rajit became the first player on the team to be out LBW twice in his career!
Jim, Sanjit and Brad are the others to have been out LBW - along with Rian when he got 'The 9', obviously.

In cricket, people often talk about records for reaching certain career totals in short amounts of time - for example, 1000 career runs in the least number of matches. Well, here's one that will probably stand for a long time to come: Raj took only 17 games to reach a double of LBWs.

Stats so far
The basic stats from our 8 games back at Weston so far reflect the struggle we've had. However, out of the bleakness, it's been the Jeganathan brothers (a.k.a. "The Jenga-bus") who have stepped up.

Rajit and Sanjit hold the top 2 spots on the bowling averages, conceding just 4.36 and 5.33 runs per over respectively - and both have played most of the losing games.

Rajit has made his mark as the top bowler by taking wickets - Gareth is the only other player close to his haul of 22 wickets so far. Sanjit has taken a different strategy, claiming relatively few wickets, but being incredibly economical - before taking off runs for wickets, batters are only able to compile 10.3 runs per over off his bowling (compared to the rest of the team who average of 14.1).

As for batting, every player is batting below their career average. But Sanjit has the smallest decrease (15.00 this season, compared to 15.10 career). Combined with his great bowling figures, this puts "Steve!!!" at the top of the team stats list so far for season 2014 with a +4.33 average contribution.

Name	Innings	Runs	Bat Avg.	Overs	Wickets	Runs Conceded	Bowl Avg.	+/- Avg.
Sanjit	6	90	15.00	12	11	64	10.67	+4.33
Xavier	8	180	22.50	16	13	147	18.38	+4.13
Rian	6	103	17.17	12	8	111	18.50	-1.33
Matt	2	17	8.50	4	4	22	11.00	-2.50
Rajit	7	34	4.86	14	22	61	8.71	-3.86
Brad	8	84	10.50	14	14	150	21.43	-10.93
Adrian	2	28	14.00	4	4	50	25.00	-11.00
Gareth	7	37	5.29	14	19	120	17.14	-11.86
Julian	3	13	4.33	6	4	51	17.00	-12.67
Dan	5	28	5.60	11	13	106	19.27	-13.67
Omar	4	14	3.50	8	7	98	24.50	-21.00

Stat of the week: Sanjit's Sevens
Keeping the spotlight on Sanjit, hare's a quick look at his seven-hitting.

Last week he hit 3 sevens in his crucial innings of 36. Not being a prolific hitter of big shots, the question was asked if he had ever hit 3 of them in an innings before.

The answer is yes, twice. In late 2011, Popped Collars played a few grading games at Lyneham against some weaker teams, giving Sanjit plenty of chances to pick off the back net. Both games were feasts of seven-hitting in general (for us - we won both games by about 200 runs).

On the second of those occasions, Sanjit picked up his trio of sevens in the opening partnership of the game, before Rian went out and one-up-ed him by hitting 3 sevens in his first over.