New Statistical Worst For England

Tags

10th wicket, Anguish, England, Last Wicket, Polish off the tail, Rubbish England

England are more than twice as bad as anyone else

We all know that England are rubbish. When they lose we (their fans) just know that they suck. And Wins are only the result of poor opposition, good players missing, great teams under-performing, or some horrible fluke.

Firmly believing this, I wanted to prove that England are the worst at bowling out 10th wicket partnerships. It wasn’t hard. Cricinfo has this wonderful list of the top 50 best, most horrible, 10th wicket stands. I figured that England appeared a lot in that list: as the victim – obviously. After twisting a SUMIF statement I produced the simple table to your right. It tells you that England are easily twice as bad as everyone else at conceding runs to the worst batters in the other team. Whoops.

OK, I know that with historical cricket stats, England and Australia are likely to have skewed results because they have played more matches but, even so, it isn’t something to stick on your bedroom wall. Unless you’re a REAL England fan.

Do not look at this.

In the interests of fair play, I think England fans should ignore the table to the left which shows that even though they are TERRIBLE at bowling out numbers 10 and 11, their own numbers 10 and 11 aren’t the worst. Shame on you England – stop being decent, I can’t cope.

What else stands out from this table is that, given how (relatively) few test matches that New Zealand have played, they’ve had more than a few decent digs from their rats and mice down the order – fear them.

<– (total runs scored by 10th wicket partnerships, per country, from the top 50)

 

Viewpoint – 3rd Level Does Exist

Tags

AES, FM Towns, MVS, Neo Geo, NeoGeo, Viewpoint

About 15 years ago I finally stumped up about £70 (just over $100) for this beautiful isometric shooting game on SNK’s fabled NeoGeo console. I couldn’t get the Japanese version (nicer box art) but I was more than content with the European version because the game was no different.

I loved everything about the game. The type of game is one of my favourites – a shmup – where you control a tiny ship and dodge bullets while shooting waves of enemies. I can’t help it, I’m childish that way.

The graphics are beautiful; the colours are bold, the animation is smooth, and there is a lavish attention to detail. The graphics style is unusual, the game is viewed in “isometric 3D” … SEGA’s Zaxxon was (possibly?) the earliest shooting game to use this perspective. Even now, there are only a handful that do. Parasquad on SEGA’s 32X is one that spring to mind, but that uses what now appears clumsy 3D instead of, the still ever-so-fetching, highly polished 2D sprites of Viewpoint.

The music is very 80s, but screams of fun and somehow works perfectly to set scenes of joyous panic. And the sound effects don’t drown out the tunes … something that can irk me tremendously.

Actually, I lied. I don’t love everything about this game. There is one problem. A pretty big one too. The game is HARD. I mean REALLY BLOODY HARD. I have owned it for 15 years and today, for the first time ever, I reached level 3. LEVEL THREE. That’s really not very far is it? But I was BUZZING. Really pumped as, on my last life, I finally killed that bastard crab at the end of level two. I got so excited I took pictures – not sure if I feared I dreamed it all, or that I would NEVER get there again!

This is the start of level 3. My ship was flashing at the start .. games of this ilk often give you a few second of invulnerability, at the start of the level, when there are no enemies about. Very kind 😦 My previous highest score was about 128,000. Scores don’t really matter in games like this; it’s all about getting past a certain level. But hey 🙂 Level 3.

This big purple robotic slug was brand new. Obviously I had to shoot his (or her?) babies and dive into the black hole behind them.

Somehow, I threaded my way from one “smart bomb” to another and butt-clenched my way through waves of bullets. Did I mention that this was my last life? Meep.

Now this was level 3’s boss. A curious fly that was shooting at me and a rapid centipede like companion that was also shooting at me. I had no idea how their attacks would work. However, I had one trick up my sleeve – if I fired lots of little bullets the game slowed down just enough to give me a fighting chance. And I managed to damage it so that it turned around and showed me his posterior. For reasons of decency, I dare not share that image. Anyway, he killed me. Or his bottom laser did. But I was physically shaking .. so excited after just playing an old-fashioned game. And you know what? I still love Viewpoint. You should too – give it a go, be brave!

My final death score