Gareth's Bowling
First of all, let's recap on the near-record bowling performance. Gareth took a hat-trick in his first over (all caught) for 3/-11. In the second over, he claimed 4 wickets in 5 balls - all of them against the same batter, and 3 of them stumped. Quality batting. His figures of 4/-14 in that over gave him a total of 7/-25.
On the all-time list for the Popped Collars these figures come in at number 4:
| Player | Opponents | Figures | Date |
| Xavier | 4Skins | 7/-28 | 14 Jun 2010 |
| Andy | Take That | 8/-27 | 21 Mar 2011 |
| Rian | 4Skins | 8/-26 | 6 Dec 2010 |
| Gareth | Diggers | 7/-25 | 26 May 2015 |
| Matt | Tailgaters | 6/-22 | 24 Jan 2014 |
| Andy | Wingmen | 6/-22 | 2 May 2011 |
| Rian | Big 4 Bandits | 6/-22 | 12 Jul 2010 |
Some notes about the other performances in that table:
- In a classic A-Ragg move, his 8/-27 included a Mankad in the 12th over while the opposition were on a team total of 20... chasing our 176.
- Matt's 6/-22 in the above list was the inspiration for another blog post last year.
Unfortunately for us, there have been 3 performances by opponents that are even greater than our best:
| Player | Team | Figures | Date |
| Ronnie | Toros | 9/-41 | 15 Apr 2014 |
| Rod | Rebels | 9/-38 | 2 May 2011 |
| Paul | Tuff Stuff | 8/-32 | 21 Nov 2011 |
Note the date "2 May 2011" - we played a double header that night in which both matches featured some outrageous bowling figures... one for us, and one against us. Such was the Weston comp back in 2011 - with a small grade of pro-teams, several grades of terrible teams, and no regard for which grade you might play in from one match to the next.
Winning on your own
Gareth's contribution was greater than our winning margin. You might say he "won the game on his own". While this sounds impressive, it actually happens very often. Altogether, it has happened about 170 times in our games.
Obviously, it happens most often in games where the winning margin is small, but Gareth did it in a game where the margin was not-so-small. So let's see whether it is common for a winning margin of 25 to be achieved by one player...
Here is a list of the largest winning margins which a single Popped Collars player managed to contribute by themselves:
| Player | Opponents | Winning Margin | Player contribution | Date |
| Xavier | Stumpers | 37 | +43 | 24 May 2013 |
| Brad | Juicy Ham | 30 | +35 | 3 Feb 2015 |
| Rian | Pidge's Coup | 29 | +31 | 27 Sep 2010 |
| Gareth | Diggers | 25 | +44 | 26 May 2015 |
| Gareth | Just 1 More | 25 | +33 | 15 Mar 2010 |
Again, Gareth comes in at number 4 on the list. Again, this is only a list of our players, but this time there are no outrageous performances that beat us. The best by an opponent is equal to our record - Jason from Tuff Stuff once made +40 in a game his team won by 37.
Really winning "on your own"
Now, just because your personal contribution was larger than the team's winning margin, that doesn't necessarily mean that you "won on your own"... there may have been other people on your team who also had a positive contribution in the match, and thus helped the team win.
Indeed, both Brad and Xavier had positive contributions last week. And in fact Brad contributed +24... just one run short of also "winning on his own".
I say that you can only really claim a one-man-win if you are the ONLY player on the winning team to make a positive contribution.
So ... has this ever happened?
Yes!
...but only on a technicality.
In November 2010, we played a game against the 4Skins who beat us by just 1 run, and only one of their players had a positive contribution. The technicality is that they only had 5 players. Now, because my stats only count "contribution" using your first innings batted and your first 2 overs bowled, it means that most of their contributions for that game were wrapped up in their "sub" overs and innings.
There have been a few games where a team had a full 8 players and won with only 2 positive contributions - but on all occasions the winning margin was in single-figures.
And so I leave you today with this thought:
It is possible for a team (who is short of players) to win and (technically) have zero players with positive contributions. Gosh, that's interesting.
Marvellous effort, that
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