STBR Stats

It's Grand Final week - Popped Collars take on It's On Like Donkey Kong at 6:50pm today in the "B-Grade" decider.
Also, in last weeks' blog, I may have incorrectly quoted our overall win/loss percentage. In an attempt to rectify that, and to see what chance we have of winning tonight's big game, here are a few quick Popped Collars win percentages.

It's semi-final week, and time to inspire the troops to perform well. Here are a few quick stats to get you fired up for tonight's big game.

The Popped Collars are the Kaleen indoor cricket champions for 2013 after comfortably defeating the Gold Diggers in the grand final on Friday night. The match played out almost exactly as the prediction in last week's post described, but with a greater margin of victory. Following is a grand final match report, and comparison with the predicted outcome:

It's Grand Final week. The second season of Kaleen's return to hosting indoor cricket, and the same two teams as last time will contest the deciding game.

Gold Diggers have dominated this season's competition, losing just one of their 23 matches during the regular season - although they have had to fight hard for some of those wins, with their opponents getting within 10 runs on four occasions. All four of those matches, as well as their only loss, came in the second half of the season.

The Popped Collars have dominated the rest of the competition. Excluding games against Gold Diggers, they have 15 wins from 17 matches, with only two close-fought victories (single figure margin). On top of those stats, both teams had relatively comfortable wins in their semi-finals last week.

A few weeks ago, we saw that Gold Diggers have all 4 wins in matches between the two teams. Today, we will take a brief look back at those four eventful matches as we head into tonight's big game...

It's the end of another season. Popped Collars have, once again, made the finals. Who will step up in these sudden-death, high-pressure matches? Who will be inspired by the occasion to perform well? Who will crumble under the weight of expectation? Who knows.... but we can look back, and see who has done it in the past!
Making the finals is a fairly regular occurrence for the Popped Collars. In fact, the only season we didn't make the finals was that final season at Lyneham when we were constantly behind on our match fees and so got no points for all our wins. If I recall correctly, we won enough matches to have finished somewhere in the top 2 if we had paid up.

In an absolute thriller of a grand final, it was the Popped Collars who prevailed by 2 runs over ASG to clinch their second premiership from the last three seasons.

The game was a close run thing from the first ball until the last. Neither team ever had a clear upper hand, and as the last few balls were sent down, it even looked as though it may end up a tie. Cool heads with the bat from Jake and Andy in the dying stages of the game saw the Popped Collars home off the last ball.

On the bottom left of the main page of the blog is the oft-neglected "Stat of the Week". It currently contains the player performances from this week's big semi-final win. And now, for the first time, is included... the fielding stats. Number of catches and run-outs are featured next to each player (there were no stumpings in the game). I have, since the start of the season, been noting the number of wickets each player has achieved as a fielder, but this is the first time they have made a public appearance.

With only one match to go this season - The Grand Final! - you don't have long to wait until the end-of-season stats which will contain the first major report of players' fielding achievements.

But before that of course, next Monday, April 18, will see the grand final between Popped Collars and ASG. The two teams who have won the previous two competitions go head-to-head. 4Skins, after losing two consecutive minor premierships, and two consecutive grand final losses, failed to make the big game this year.