Third Dot Ball: Batsmen

Continuing from last week, where we looked at the glory of bowling third-balls, it's now time to look at the unfortunate business of having to face them while in bat.

This is pretty much going to be a copy and paste of last week with the batting stats and commentary in place of the bowling ones.

Fourth Ball: Bonus Stat

While looking through the "third dot ball" stats, I found that there have been 6 occasions during Popped Collars history where there have been too many dot ball in a row. Obviously just times where the umpire has not noticed that he should call 'third ball' and has let an extra one go.

Four of them were split across consecutive overs, allowing 3 consecutive balls to be bowled with no score off them. The other two were 'double-score' balls which were not counted as two dots, as the rules of the Weston Competition said they should be.

Four of them were while we were batting - two of them while we were bowling. So we've actually got the better of it.

Third Ball: Score Must Change

After seeing Brad send down consecutive dot balls and have the next one smacked to the back net, Andy proposed that was something that seemed to happen quite often.

This week's blog will check out all sorts of details relating to "third ball". And after I made a point of saying the 'consecutive balls' stats that I did last time, it turned out that this was even more tedious. But whatever...

Jake's Question Of The Week

The Popped Collars tonight dished up the first loss of the season for arch rivals 4-Skins. Arch rivals... perhaps. Or perhaps one could call us their 'bogey team'. The last time they lost a game was the grand final last season.

As the Popped Collars were out chasing down the 120 required for victory, Jake was on the sidelines asking the hard-hitting questions. Never has he been one to shy away from controversy, and tonight was no exception as he posed: "Has Brad done anything useful recently?"

Questioning the form of the captain... dangerous territory. What do the stats tell us?

In the last 3 games, our fearless leader has the following figures:
Batting: 5, 12, 11
Bowling: 3/2, 0/28, 3/16
Contribution: +3, -16, -5

I will leave it to you, good reader, to judge for yourself. Personally, I think 3/2 are "useful" bowling figures from tonight's game.

Last week, Brad also bowled an extra over, which brought 0/5, and allowed him to join the "5 dot balls" club - an elite list of people who have bowled a single over containing 5 dot-balls. Due to the 'third dot ball' rule of indoor cricket, the most it is possible to bowl in an 8-ball-over is 6. No one has yet achieved this maximum in Popped Collars history.

The 5-dot-balls have been bowled by Gareth (twice), Andy, Rian, Julian, Brad, and Xavier (who did it in his second over of tonight). No opposition bowler has done it against us yet.