A Load of Balls

Bowlers! A competitive breed by nature, always aggrieved when withdrawn from the attack, and generally exasperated with the fielding of their colleagues. But so important to the success of the team as one good bowling spell can sway the game your way. Equally, one bad spell...

Bowling statistics can be a bit odd too. An occasional bowler can suddenly be top of certain stats just due to the nature of the game, so I've decided to concentrate on the front line bowlers in the main piece, then a little fun bit at the end for the 'anomalies'. A front line bowler in this case is someone who bowled at least 35 overs during the season - I think that's fair.

Let's start with the top ten based on wickets taken

Player Overs Maidens Runs Wickets Mohammed Zulfiqar 150.0 41 424 38 Mohammad Qadeer 151.0 42 411 30 Zahir Abbas 83.4 16 213 24 Danny Kernan 98.0 7 525 21 Mohammed Arshad 92.3 16 363 19 Dale Pinkerton 51.4 5 241 17 Akeel Rashid 56.2 8 237 17 Bob Morrisroe 66.4 14 213 17 Darren Shields 73.3 9 275 17 Aftab Khan 57.0 6 269 16

So no surprise to see Zullie top of the list, closely followed by Qadeer. Over 300 overs between the pair. But Ziggy was closing in when you consider his late arrival to the party.

Interestingly all of the top 5 except Qadeer (almost identical so good consistency) markedly improved on last year's figures, so next year big things are expected!

Economy Rate - basically who was stingy with the runs conceded?

This award goes to Zahir Abbas, going for just 2.55 per over. Also in the sub 3 per over group were Mohammad Qadeer (2.72), Naveed Hussain (2.80), Mohammed Shahnawaz (2.82) and Mohammed Zulfiqar (2.83). Well done all, good control over the ball.

Strike rate measures how many balls on average the player bowls for each wicket.

Dale Pinkerton is the winner of this category - a wicket every 18.24 deliveries! Also of note are Mohammed Shahnawaz (18.70), Akeel Rashid (19.88), Zahir Abbas (20.92) & Aftab Khan (21.38)

Average is the number of runs conceded per wicket taken

Mohammed Shahnawaz leads the pack with just 8.80 runs per wicket! That last over of the season (5 balls, no runs, 3 wickets!) really helped out here... Next up we have Zahir Abbas (8.88), Mohammed Zulfiqar (11.16), Bob Morrisroe (12.53) & Mohammad Qadeer (13.70)

We had some excellent bowling spells this year, with two players making it onto the Yorkshire regional performance of the week board - one of them twice!

Let's look at the outstanding match returns:

Zahir Abbas 8-17 vs. Sutton in Craven Mohammed Zulfiqar 7-31 vs. Denholme 7-41 vs. Denholme (likes them doesn't he!) 6-31 vs. Foulridge Mohammed Arshad 6-21 vs. Bingley Congs Dale Pinkerton 6-22 vs. Bradford & Bingley Aftab Khan 5-14 vs. Haworth Mohammad Qadeer 5-28 vs. Eldwick & Gilstead

And finally, the funnies. Let's remove the restrictions and see who came top of the various categories really :)

Economy Rate: Jamie Fullwood - just 1.27 runs on average from his 15 overs Strike Rate: Stephen Bailey - 8.00 thanks to 4 wickets from the 32 balls he bowled this season Steve McGarry - 15.00, with 2 wickets in his only bowling spell Gulzreen Ashraf- 16.00, didn't bowl much but did so effectively Bilal Bashir - 16.33 from an impressive 3-28 in the last game of the season

And there you have it. It's not for me to pick a best bowler of the season, though there's clearly a few standouts there. The main thing to point out is that our bowling units are pretty strong. Injuries and illness deprived us of some key bowlers this year, but others stepped in and performed well.

As always, just think how good next year will be!