7 sevens. And more sevens.

A couple of weeks ago the Popped Collars racked up a big win (237-87), with only 6 players, over “6 & Out” (the team one of our occasional subs, Matt, plays for). After the game I noted in an email to team-mates a few records that we appeared to have set during the game. With my stats not up to date, however, I was unable to confirm that they were in fact records. I will do this now...

Potential record #1
Most sevens in a match by the team (14)
Status: Confirmed

Prior to this game, the most sevens we’ve hit in an innings is 12... and the most a team has hit against us is also 12... and they were both in the same game. Unfortunately for our opponents on that day (“Just 1 More”), they also fell victim to the most wickets we’ve taken in an innings (26), and we beat them 231-104.

Potential record #2
Most sevens in an over (4)
Status: Confirmed

Rian and Andrew (Pearson) not only slapped 4 of them off the final over of the innings, but in fact hit them from the final 5 balls of the innings (7,7,2,7,7). The only other time we’ve seen 4 sevens in an over was in the first game after our grand final win when we had a century partnership scored against us. In the final over of that partnership Sanjit get taken for 35 runs - including 3 sevens and an eight.

Potential record #3
Most sevens in a match by a player (7)
Status: Confirmed

Now this could be considered a bit dodgy by some, as Pearson batted twice in the match. But nevertheless, you can’t argue that hitting 7 sevens in a match is quite impressive. He hit 4 of them in his first bat, almost making our teams top score for the day, and then went in to bat a second time and racked up 3 more. The next best in a match (and also the equal-best in a single bat) is 4.

Potential record #4
Highest individual score without hitting a seven (38)
Status: Confirmed

While everyone else was hitting sevens, Xavier was taking the opposite approach. He hit 3 side-backs and 2 fives in his 38 runs, but never a seven. This beats the old record of 36 by 2 runs. The score of 36 has actually been made 9 times in Popped Collars matches, and 4 of those times have been seven-less.

Special mention here must go here to Andy, the owner of one of those old scores of 36 which I note still holds another, similar but more impressive, record. His particular 36 consisted of no back net scores at all! He faced:  3 dot-balls, 2 singles, 4 twos, 6 threes and 4 extras. The second best back-net-less score is 31.

On with the stats

Indeed, I have been a bit slack on the ol' stats recently. I've always been thinking that I need to build the X-treme Stats program more and more, but doing that takes a lot of time, which I don't usually have. So I've decided to take a new approach. I will still endeavor to upgrade the program when I can, but I will also be handing out all sorts of interesting numbers here, inspired by events and achievements in recent games, recent records, or whatever other random things I feel like looking at for the week.

After getting a bit behind the times over the change-of-season, I've now updated my database with all the Popped Collars matches. The GG team info is still in the form of a pile of scorecards on my desk at the moment. So for the time being, stats will only come from the original team.

If you still want to use the X-treme Stats program, I've uploaded the latest data file. So you can still check out  your up-to-date graphs and basic stats. See the link at the top right of the blog.

For now, I shall set to work compiling my first batch of awesome stats, facts and lists for you, which shall appear in the coming days.

And just like Steven, from at the CricInfo website, feel free to send me your Popped Collars related questions.

A Trio Of Centuries

I've been putting off writing this post because we always seem to have an upcoming match which could potentially turn the current "trio" into a "quad" or more. Indeed, the match the other day gave plenty of opportunities which no one was able to cash in on. Anyway... on with today's article....

Having played and umpired a lot of indoor cricket in my time, I can safely say that a batting partnership scoring a century is a very rare occurrence. And yet, in the last few weeks the Popped Collars and GG teams saw three of them scored in the space of 4 matches!

A match to remember

For anyone who wasn't there, sit right back and listen to the tale of tonight's indoor cricket game. For anyone who was there, sit back and re-live the event.

The story begins with the incomprehensible revelation earlier in the week that our Friday night 6-a-side team, "GGs", had been placed into D-Grade. That's right, a team made up mostly of players from a team which won the top division premiership last season at Weston had been placed in the 3rd of 4 grades at Lyneham. Don't forget that a couple of years ago the team abandoned Lyneham due to continued frustrations over their incompetence in grading teams properly. Well, now we are back, and that same incompetence has this time gone in our favour, rather than against us.

The story continues with a lot of people being unavailable to play, and no one being able to find people to fill in. Xavier and Brad decided that it didn't matter, and it would be an interesting challenge to try to take on a D-Grade team with only 4 players. So they did.

GRAPHS!

A new version of X-treme Stats is now uploaded. And it features GRAPHS!
Check out the classic bar graph showing players scores per innings over time. Also available for bowling performances.

Graphs can be found in 'Player Profiles' - there is a button on the batting tab, and another on the bowling tab. Very pretty.

At the moment it's just very simple. I just made sure it was working, and showing graphs correctly, but haven't added any detail or bonus features yet. More features to be added to this soon, including the line that shows how the players average changes over time.

Download here, or on the side-bar under "Latest Version"