BARBARIANS REVIEW OF THE SEASON
By James Wheeler
So the sun has set on another Barbarians summer. 2015 will certainly be remembered as a record breaking campaign both on and off the field for the side. As I am sure everybody knows that I love a stat and probably the best one of the summer is that not one of our 16 games was lost to the elements.
On the field we won half of our fixtures which is always the minimum target I set before a ball is bowled. We used 44 players from across all four Saturday sides, colts and our Twenty20 specialists. Playing our majority of our games at home on an excellent wicket, our batting was always going to be strong. We posted our highest score of 203, while Rajan Modha showed off his obvious talent by scoring the most runs in a season by a Barbarian (359) and scoring our first hundred against Northwood Town.
All our batsmen and not just Rajan had good seasons and for the first time since we started midweek Twenty20 cricket we consistently scored heavily, especially at home. The top order really clicked this summer and we were especially strong during the powerplays. I was fortunate to have batsmen of the calibre of Geezer, IB, Tharshan and Hemmsey. Those guys along with the lower order played Twenty20 cricket as it should be played as we played carefree attacking cricket.
Barbarians Leading Runscorers
|
Name
|
Mch
|
Inn
|
N O
|
Runs
|
H S
|
100s
|
50s
|
Av
|
|
R.Modha
|
10
|
9
|
1
|
359
|
104
|
1
|
2
|
44.88
|
|
J.Wheeler
|
11
|
9
|
1
|
225
|
73
|
|
2
|
28.13
|
|
A.Carr
|
4
|
3
|
0
|
149
|
82
|
|
1
|
49.67
|
|
T.Kanagaraj
|
9
|
8
|
1
|
141
|
60*
|
|
1
|
20.14
|
|
I.Barrie
|
3
|
2
|
0
|
104
|
84
|
|
1
|
52
|
We scored 2300 runs in our 16 games this summer at an average of 7.6 runs per over with an average total of 143.75 runs per innings. This is comfortably our best average score in an innings in the last 5 seasons. At home the average goes up to 152.08 per innings.
Average Barbarians Innings
2015 143.75
2014 125.44
2013 137.69
2012 129.55
2011 121.25
The bowling attack performed well for the majority of the summer, especially bowling on our road of a wicket at home. Bowling with field restrictions is always difficult and I thought that the bowlers developed and learnt new skills over the season.
As always Ridders led the attack picking up 22 wickets but there were also some excellent spells by KP, Kimmo and our spin bowlers Nandesh Patel and Richard Clarke kept us competitive.
​Barbarians Best Bowling
|
Name
|
Mch
|
Ov
|
Mdn
|
Wkts
|
Best
|
S R
|
Av
|
|
I.Ridley
|
16
|
59.2
|
1
|
22
|
4--22
|
16.18
|
20.09
|
|
S.Kanthasamy
|
11
|
38
|
0
|
13
|
2--7
|
17.54
|
19.15
|
|
S.Kimsey
|
12
|
41
|
1
|
10
|
3--23
|
24.6
|
29.1
|
|
R.Clarke
|
8
|
28
|
1
|
10
|
2--17
|
16.8
|
18.8
|
Finally I need to thank a few people for their help this summer. Firstly thanks to Loz for his outstanding efforts on the wicket. We have played on belting wickets at home all summer and is without doubt the best wicket we play on. Clarkey and Ridders stood in captained with aplomb when I was unavailable with work and family commitments.
The Barbarians have never stood still and we will continue to innovate. If anybody has ideas on how we can make things better please contact me over the winter and we can look to take any suggestions or ideas forward.
Wheels