Milestone games

Last week was Gareth's 200th match for the Popped Collars and we celebrated with a good win over a very good opposition. Presumably we were inspired by Gareth personal milestone! If a few weeks time, Sanjit will reach 200 and Xavier 250 during the same match (assuming they both play all matches between now and then). Will we be inspired on that occasion as well? Will the individual players perform well? Or will the crumble under the pressure and emotion of the situation?
The stats cannot answer these questions (yet), but they can look at how players have performed in their milestone games in the past.

Batting in milestone matches
There is in fact quite a trend of players batting much better than usual in their milestone games (multiples of 50).

For example, Andy Ragg scored 21 and 34 in his 50th and 100th matches, even though his career average is less than 20. Xavier averages over 30 in his 4 milestone games so far, while Brad and Rian are just unstoppable when they play a big match - both monstrous averages of over 40 in those games!

Here's the list including all people who have played at least 2 milestone games (at least 100 career games). Sorted by the amount the improve during special games.

Player	Milestone games	Average	+/- career avg.
Rian	4	40.25	+15.54
Brad	4	34.00	+11.26
Andy	2	27.50	+8.35
Xavier	4	31.60	+7.85
Matt	2	16.50	+4.92
Sanjit	3	15.00	+1.08
Gareth	4	16.00	-0.78

Brad and Rian have both made 50s in milestone games. Brad 55 in his 100th, and Rian 56 in his 150th.

So for those of you who are approaching a multiple of 50 matches, you can look forward to it, the stats say you are likely to bat well in those games!

Bowling in milestone matches
Bowling doesn't quite go so well for everyone. Usually I would try to come up with some strange psychological reason why batting and bowling are different in these matches to explain this. But today, I've got nothing. So, here's the stats.

Player	Milestone games	Average	+/- career avg.
Xavier	4	4.00	+10.25
Matt	2	10.50	+8.09
Rian	4	2.75	+8.02
Brad	4	15.00	+0.32
Andy	2	18.00	-4.92
Gareth	4	20.25	-7.19
Sanjit	3	26.33	-11.80

In the last column, "+" means an improvement over your career average (not that you concede more runs).

That means that overall, Rian and Xavier are the two players who improve the most during their personally significant matches. And here's a chance for me to invent an explanation for it:

Those two players are the most likely ones to know when these matches are coming up - one because he does the stats, the other because he's the most interested in them (or at least, the most vocal in requesting blogs each week). Therefore - it is better for people to know when they are reaching a milestone, as it will improve their chances of playing well!!

From now on, I will try to make sure everyone knows when they will be playing such a game!


Match number = runs

As an added extra today (just because I have a list of "runs scored by match number" in front of me) here's a strange stat for you:

"people who scored a number of runs equal to the match number they were playing in"

Dan Sheahan is the star of this stat, having done it 4 times. He scored 20 in his 20th match, then 21 in his next (21st) match. Within the next few weeks he also scored 23 and 27 in his 23rd and 27th matches respectively.

Julian has done it 3 times (8, 16, 28).

We can also look at the high and low records for this stat:
Stewie (the old bloke from my work that plays for the Bilbies) holds the low-record, being the only person to score 1 run the first time he played for us.
Andy has the high score in this category, making 42 runs in his 42nd match back in June 2010.

The bookies are offering long odds on Sanj or X making individual scores of 200 or 250 in their upcoming match...