Contributors in wins and losses

Last week, Popped Collars won a thrilling game, getting home by just 2 runs after Gareth safely wafted at the final ball wide outside the off stump, while Rian invoked Gandhi at the other end. When the stats were compiled, it turned out that only 2 players from the winning team made positive contributions - and one of them was only +1. With that introduction, I'll leave you to deduce the obvious topic of this post.

First, a clarification on contributions when teams are short of players. The stats used in this post only count each player's first innings, and their first 2 overs bowled. If you count people's second time batting, and extra overs bowled, you end up with strange skewed versions of "contribution" that really don't reflect what someone did in a game.

On the other hand, it also leaves a whole heap of runs for and against not attributed to anyone (or just attributed to "sub"). In conclusion, only games where a team has a full compliment of players are worth considering...

Least positive contributors in a winning team
There has actually been an instance of a team winning with (technically) only 1 positive contributor. That was a game where the 4Skins beat us by 1 run with only 5 players... so a lot of their contribution is wrapped up in "sub" overs and innings.

There have been quite a few instances of teams winning a game with only 2 players making positive contributions - however, almost all of them are either in 6-a-side games, or were done when the team was short of players. The Popped Collars win last week was only the third time it has been done with 8 players. And the first time it has happened in more than 4 years.

In May 2010, we beat 4Skins by 3 runs (123-120) with only Sanjit (+3) and Rian (+34) making positive. Incredibly similar stats to last week when Sanjit (+1) and Rian (+34) were also the useful players.

Before that, we were beaten by a team called 66's in September 2009, by the relatively large margin of 7 runs (157-150). In that game, they were saved by one fellow making a huge +51 contribution (40 and 5/-11). The only other positive was a +5.

These three games obviously also hold the record for "most negative contributions in a winning team", with 6 each.

Most positive contributors on a losing team
This stat is less impressive, with the highest number being 5. In an 8-a-side game (which they are), this approximately half the team anyway, which is not unreasonable in a close game. Having said that, it is perhaps surprising that it's only happened twice.

We once beat the old blokes at Weston even though 5 of their 8 players made positive. They had +1, +4, +5, +9 and +12, but lost the game by 2 runs (108-110).

In our 1-run win over the Dirty Gypsies just a few months ago, they also had 5 positive players. Their +3, +6, +7, +9 and +18 were balanced out by a couple of negatives in the 20s.

Least negative contributors on a losing team
While this may sound like it's the same as above, there is are two games that fit here, but not the previous category.

Once, we beat a team who had only 1 negative contributor - but they only had 5 players.

And, more impressively, on one of the rare occasions that GG lost a game, we had only 1 negative contributor in a full team of 6. The unfortunate player that day was Jake, whose -37 saw us go down by 17 runs despite our other players making +9, +6, +4, +1 and 0.