So yesterday I got this itch to figure out Shubham Dubey’s batting stats, right? Wanted the hard numbers, the cold facts, nothing fluffy. Figured, how tough could it be?
The Plan Hits a Brick Wall Right Away
First stop: I fire up my laptop. Head straight to where everyone says you should go for cricket stats. Type in “Shubham Dubey batting stats”. Hit enter. Boom. Nothing. Page loads, ads flashing everywhere. Scores. News. Some junk fantasy league junk. His key stats? Nope. Zilch. Big fat zero. Annoying as heck. Felt like the universe was messing with me. “Cricket stats site doesn’t have cricket stats? Seriously?” Probably should’ve seen that coming. But hope springs eternal.
Going Deep into the Weeds (or Spreadsheets)
Fine. No magic button. Time to get my hands dirty. Grabbed a coffee. Sat down properly. Decided:
- Find every single match this guy played in. Every. Single. One.
- Look up official scoresheets, match reports. Dig deep.
- Manually add up all the runs, balls faced. Painstaking work.
Started clicking through old tournaments. IPL stuff. Random domestic games. Found one scorecard buried deep. Copied the runs: 28. Pasted it into my spreadsheet. Found another: 17 off 10. Added that. Ball-by-ball, over-by-over. Like doing actual cricket admin work without the pay. Tedious doesn’t even cover it.
When Technology Doesn’t Help
Tried being smart. Thought maybe copy-pasting tables from PDF scorecards would save time. Epic fail. Pasted it, and everything looked like alphabet soup gone wrong. Numbers mixed with player names mixed with “Extras”. Total nightmare. Spent more time fixing columns and deleting garbage text than actually finding Dubey’s stats. Cried a little inside. Deleted the mess. Went back to the slow, stupid, manual method. Type one number at a time. Eye strain central.
The “Aha!” Moment That Wasn’t
About an hour in, sweating and frustrated, I found a page with a “Career Stats” table. Heart skips a beat. This is it! Scanned down… Dubey… Dubey… And there! Total runs! Matches played! Average! Strike Rate! YES! My grubby little hands poised over the keyboard. Ready to record.
Looked closer. That’s Shubham Dube. D-U-B-E. Not D-U-B-E-Y. Different guy entirely. Felt like the universe had played the world’s worst joke on me. Cursed quietly, closed the tab. Back to the spreadsheets.
Finally Throwing in the Towel (Kinda)
Hours gone. Coffee cup empty. Headache setting in. Got something, at least. Enough to spit out some basic figures without lying outright. Things like:
- Runs Scored Total: Added up my scribbled notes on scores I found.
Matches Played: Counted the games I’d actually located data for.
Strike Rate Estimate: (Total Runs / Total Balls) 100. Crude but functional.
It ain’t perfect. Probably missing a game or two. But it’s what I scraped together after wrestling garbage sites and identical names. You want polished stuff? Go pay for the fancy database. Me? I did it the hard way. The dumb way. Got the basic stats. My brain is mush now. Next time? Maybe just watch the game instead.
