Thirty-nine Summers

Brigands 1988-2026

Thirty-nine summers, 946 fixtures, 891 of them finished and the rest abandoned due to rain.

We have combined the archives of Lovett-Turner, Peach and Henderson with results from 1988 to the end 2026.

The record

- 316 won, 292 drawn, 279 lost, four tied.

- The all-time win rate is 35.5% of matches played.

- Best season on the books: 2022. Seventeen wins from twenty-eight.

- Worst: 1990. Two wins from twenty-five.

- Most defeats in a summer: 1989, fourteen from twenty-three.

- Busiest fixture lists: 2003 and 2022, twenty-nine apiece.

Brigands do win more nowadays

- 24.4% of matches won across the first ten seasons.

- 42.6% across the last nine.

- Twenty-two of the thirty-nine seasons finished with more wins than defeats.

But Brigands are no harder to beat

- We lost 30.7% of what we played in 1988–97.

- We have lost 30.7% since 2018.

- The defeat column has not moved in four decades.

- What moved was the draw: 44.1% of matches then, 26.2% now.

- Every extra win the club has gained since 1988 came out of a draw, not out of a defeat.

- No rule or policy ever changed. Attitudes did; modern side declares earlier

- More batters retire; Eighteen of this season's twenty-four fifties were retired or not out.

- Both habits shorten an innings and leave time to bowl a side out. Both make a draw less likely.

The nineties, for those who were there

- 1990: fourteen draws from twenty-five.

- 1991: fifteen from twenty-four.

- Two summers. Only five wins. Twenty-nine draws. Fifteen defeats. Tedious.

2026

- 10 won, 9 lost, 5 drawn from 24.

- Thirteenth of thirty-nine seasons, six points above the long-run average.

- Five draws in twenty-four is the sixth-lowest figure in the book.

- Not one fixture lost to the weather; the first full season on record to manage it.

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