Halfterm Report: Or "20 Fun Facts About the First Half of the 2023 Season"

 

So the first half of the 2023 season is in the books, a season that thus far has featured as many league wins as potential season-ending injuries.

And the only thing that can be said about this halfterm report is that we could do better.

Anyway, here are 20 Fun Facts about the season so far.

1) Pride of place goes to the fact we've set a new club record for lowest ever total, 40 against Old Warden.

2) Discounting concessions (for the record we've conceded two and been awarded the points in another) we've played 10 league games and won one.

3) We've won one game out of seven batting first and lost all three batting second.

4) In half of our league games we have failed to score 100.

5) In every single one of our league games we have lost 10 wickets, our best performance coming when Wayne Cutts was run out off the last ball at Sandridge.

6) Ben Wiles is the only player to have scored over 200 runs so far.

7) Mark Tattersall and Josh Scott are the only other players to have scored more than 100.

8) Tattersall has scored the second-most runs; unfortunately he's also conceded the second-most runs and is currently 40 in the red.

9) Jamie Cummins and James Barker are the only bowlers with more than 10 wickets (12 each).

10) 20 different bowlers have taken at least one wicket.

11) So far this year we have used 39 different players.

12) Of those 39, 22 have recorded at least one duck.

13) In the scorebook at Wotton-on-Stone, Darren Lunney appeared as Bunny.

14) Wayne Cutts has given as many Offley batsmen out in one umpiring stint as he has scored runs (3 including 2 leg byes) in 4 innings. 

15) Matty Taylor can't tell the difference between Boaty's bat and Boaty's arse. 

16) Roger Piepenstock has an off games note for the rest of the year. 

17) Richie Barker has now missed matches with three different ailments.

18) Peter Gilkes has more ducks (6) than the nine lowest-scoring batsmen have produced runs between them (5).

19) Despite everything we fielded a full team on three consecutive days from the 24th-26th June - 21 different players were able to experience the thrill of defeat.

20) After Monday's narrow cup defeat we are now concentrating on the leagues; we are currently 85 points adrift of safety in the Saracens League (how is that even possible?) and 35 points above the drop zone (how the fuck is that even possible????????) in the Bedfordshire League ahead of a trip to Kempston on Sunday who are actually below us.