It will have been of little consolation to Pat Collins [R&SPU] that he maintained his individual lead in the points table and passed 1,000 runs for the season, as his side lost the Alan Murray Final to The Hills by less than a yard on Sunday in an exciting finish. Lost by a yard is not an official phrase, but it does demonstrate just how close the final was, with The Hills triumphing on less wickets lost with the scores tied.
The overall table is starting to narrow down the list of players who could end the season as our champion. Whilst Pat has allegedly finished his season and returned to Australia, he has done so with a cushion of 135 points over second placed Eddie Richardson [North County]. It is doubtful that this will be a sufficient lead, but Pat would be expected to remain in the top 10, where his lead is over 11th place is more than 500 points. To demonstrate the uneven spread of points, the only player with exactly half of Pat’s total (2,194/2 = 1,097) is in 90th place overall and in one of those “you couldn’t make it up” sort of things, the player concerned is the author.
2,219 players have taken the field this season with 373 players doing so just the once, no doubt dragged from beds, bars and breakfast tables with pleading and begging. 1,255 players have appeared less than 10 times, but 186 players have appeared at least 20 times, certainly more than a full season for most teams.
778,219 points have been scored, with an even split between the three disciplines: batting points, which is the sum of points earned for runs scored, centuries and half centuries scored; bowling points, which comprises of wickets points tally and five wicket hauls points and; fielding points including turning up, catches and stumpings. In third place with 32.5% of the total points is fielding, just 3,950 points behind bowling. Bowling has 257,020 points, 33.0% of the total and 11,109 points or 1.4%, behind batting.
255,159 runs have been scored from the bat (and excluding extras) and 12,772 wickets have been taken by bowlers. Wicket-keepers have taken 232 stumpings and 4,888 catches have been held, with or without gloves.
Adam Ellison’s [Rush] 7 for 11 has yet to be beaten as the best analysis and Andre Botha’s [Clontarf] top score of 170 remains the highest seen in the province.
S. Hickson [The Hills] has managed to play in 12 games and has batted in 5 (not out three times) and has yet to register a single run. Not a solitary run either for another 194 players. 521 players have failed to accumulate more than 10 runs all season. 1,663 players have failed to score more runs in the season to date than Andre Botha’s single innings score of 170.
P. Flanagan [YMCA] is the only bowler in the province to send down more than 200 overs – 204 – but there are a number of players who will have done so shortly, including our leading wicket taker, Simon Rice [Greystones] and the experienced Conor Gibbons [Malahide].
P. Donoughue [Balbriggan] and C. Garry [North County] remain the only bowlers to take wickets without conceding runs. Conor Gibbons however is leading one of the more unusual categories, more wickets than runs. Amazingly despite having a highest score of 4* in 10 innings, Conor has taken more wickets (37) than he has scored runs (8). No less surprisingly 96 other players have also done so. At the other end of this scale is L. Jansen [Rush] with 996 more runs than wickets.
C. Diviney [R&SPU] has safer hands without wood in them (stop sniggering!), managing to hold 6 more catches than he has scored runs. In this category, 30 players have matched C. Diviney’s feat, just not to the same extent. Most of them have played only one or two games, but C. Diviney has appeared 15 times and has batted 5 times.
Congratulations go this week: to Pat Collins for passing 1,000 runs in the season and for a great season; to Clontarf and Malahide on their All-Ireland victories in the Bob Kerr and National Cups. Also well done to Railway Union who also won the Middle Cup at the weekend out in Rush against Rush. Finally congratulations to Syed Mehdi [Balbriggan], who as can be read elsewhere on this site, struck a century from 35 balls at the weekend.
And now for something completely the same….
The current top 5 overall point scorers are:
In the major categories the top 3 (and tied) leaders are as follows:
Runs Scored (one point per run)
Wickets Taken (20 points per wicket)
Catches held (10 points per catch)
Stumpings (15 points per stumping)
Matches played (10 points per appearance)
In the bonus categories the top 3 (and tied) are:
50’s scored (10 points each)
Centuries scored (20 points each)
Five wicket hauls (10 points per haul)
Finally, as usual, you can request figures for individuals, clubs or all the available statistics from craig@cricket.ie.