It’s a special feeling, waking up and — once the customary post-sleep fear and confusion passes — remembering that you’ll be spending today at the DSG, of all places. It’s like waking up on a Wednesday and realising you’ve booked the day off, and you can go to an aquarium instead, or spend the day posting insane JFK conspiracy theories online.

Well… kind of. Nothing really compares to that high-rising curl of excitement and anxiety one gets when they close the door behind them and start slinking their way to the quiet green leafy nothingness that is Dulwich for another day of standing in a field and shouting things. Not even staring at axolotls. And I love staring at those weird little f*ckers.

Today, I’m staring at something even better: 10 gorgeous Ploughmen, who have travelled from all corners of London for a game that may not actually happen, or at least won’t be completed, on account of a rather gloomy weather forecast. As we walk over to Burbage, Chris Butlin, looking down at a slick muddy wet outfield, asks, to nobody in particular, “Are we actually playing cricket today?”

It’s a rhetorical question, of course, because we very much are playing cricket today. But I get his sentiment: the grass is far too lubricated for my liking, the sky looks menacing and ugly, and the opposition aren’t even here yet, despite the game starting in, like, five minutes.

To move things along, skipper Matt Spencer attempts to do the toss via video call with the Northolt Manor captain, but he doesn’t get an answer. He fires off a text. Two blue bombers. A sad state of affairs. At least he’s had plenty of practice with this type of thing.

Meanwhile, the Plough are up and about, everyone in their whites, everyone just kind of assuming we will bowl first, everyone following Umar Iqbal’s warm-up drills, Leo Nieboer struggling to concentrate because, well, just look at the jawline on that boy. Exceptional. If Joe Wicks came by right now and started juggling fireballs while doing squats and singing La Marseillaise at the same time, I wouldn’t even register it.

The oppo arrives and we are fielding. I don’t know if the toss was won normally, or just forfeited, or whether the Northolt skipper just backed down under the menacing glare and heavy breathing of Liam Gray, who may have simply destroyed the scorer’s shed with one almighty blow if we’d been put into bat.

Thankfully the handsome club captain is bowling, and it’s beautiful. He’s got two wickets in as many overs. He ends up with 3-28 from six. We can all see, from early on, that these blokes are mainly just cross-batting everything. On a slow pitch, with Grayzer nipping it away, it’s suicidal. They’re groping in the dark. Many plays and misses and hyena-like noises from The Boys. One is smacked down the throat of Spence at mid on, the other two caught in the slips.

At the other end, Damon Greeney is producing one of his finest spells. It’s metronomic. It’s actually kind of hypnotic; for a moment I forget my obligation as Spence’s appointed Vibes Captain to make vicious levels of noise every ball and instead just kind of stand there in quiet awe, noticing the quiet mask of concentration across Greeney’s face — the look of a man who has found his own rhythm and isn’t hearing anything else. There’s so much channel on display I briefly wonder if I’m in Calais. He forces two edges in two balls. Neither stick.

In his final over, the batter launches one up high to Spence at long on, and you can hear his quivering anus from mid wicket, but he takes it. The deserved wicket arrives. Greeney finishes on 1-20 off his six. With 12 overs gone, the oppo are 40-4.

The oppo are also probably thinking the worst is over. They’re expecting some less accurate stuff, maybe, or perhaps a spinner. What they’re not expecting is Azharul Haque.

Thing is, nobody expects Azharul Haque. I’ve faced that boy in the nets regularly since 2021, and it still gives me the howling fantods. When someone faces it for the first time, it’s like they’ve been shown a new colour. After Aza’s first ball, the opening batter — nicely set by this time — looks around as if he’s lost in Tesco looking for his Mum. It’s a devastating spell. The ball is fast and it’s hooping and it’s clattering stumps. It’s getting Nieboer dangerously excited.

He is training particularly hard this season, our Aza, and it’s paying off. Where before he often needed two overs to find rhythm, and had one or two wayward deliveries per over, almost everything is on the money today — some pure fire-breathing yorkers, others just back of a length. He’s even developed a cross-seam delivery, which he tactfully uses to remove the aforementioned opener, finding his edge and prompting him to groan “Oh… NO” as the ball sails into the gloves of Harry Edmonds. 3-20. Somebody call that guy’s Mum; he wants picking up.
Northolt’s misery is compounded by Matt Spencer at the other end. The skipper seems to get faster with each game and here, on this slow deck, they simply can’t get him away. When something does get through the field, it’s more through luck than anything else. No comfortability here at all. He doesn’t get a wicket, but 0-9 off six overs carries its own sort of menace and sexual appeal. Northolt add 28 runs in 12 overs.

With just a few overs left, they haven’t even got 100 on the board. Tom Glynne-Jones comes on and takes two wickets, bringing his season tally to 8 from three games. I’ve been part of all of them, and when he tells me, later on, that he’ll be away for the next two weeks, depriving me of seeing him in the field, my bottom lip starts quivering, and I briefly consider becoming a full-blown opium addict. Umar brings some nice control at the other end and the final score is 114 all out.

Sheltering from the cold in the DSG, we enjoy a range of hot beige snacks. The IPL is on the TV and some team I’ve never heard of is scoring faster than any of us have ever scored. Grayzer finds a penis-shaped chicken nugget and it occurs to me that we never really left school, any of us — just got thrust into a world of taxes and hate crimes and buying things on Amazon with the same child-like brains we started off with. Not the kind of thoughts one wants when they’re about to bat on a pitch where the oppo just crawled to 114.

Thankfully, Nieboer has the long-levered sensation that is Tom Lane at the other end. It takes him 10 balls to hit his first four, which felt like at least seven balls too late, but now he’s locked in — the very next one flies over my head for six. The oppo needed a fast start, multiple wickets, but instead they’ve got a 8ft thespian with no fear of anything at all pummelling anything even remotely in his arc. After five overs, he’s completely taken the sting out of the game.

It’s so thrilling, so effortless, that even Nieboer feels randy enough to hit a six of his own, and then, inexplicably, another (off a total rank full toss on the legside). Many were quite happy to see this, but only because they failed to understand the true meaning of it. The Fifteen Signs Before Doomsday, found in the Apocalypse of Thomas, lists a range of events set to occur before the ending of the world — such as stones fighting each other, the earth burning with water, and sea animals gathering on the surface and bellowing unintelligibly. Among these harbingers is Leo Nieboer sending one sailing over square leg. The centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The fog is coming. The fog is coming. Make peace with your loved ones, Plough.

In the end, the pair knock the runs off inside 15 overs, Lane finishing on 73* (47) having hit five sixes, one of which was so impossibly large it ended up on the Hollies, Nieboer finishing on 37* (43).

I feel bad for Lane during post-match beers, because he’s just hit 83% of Northolt’s total in under 50 balls, but people seem much more interested in Nieboer’s sixes. I head into the showers and scrub myself next to Damon Greeney — a wonderful bonus on this splendid damp day. As more beers go down, the rain comes in. The 1st XI arrive, fresh from a romping victory of their own, and Matt Bolshaw tries to make sense of one of the worst scorecards — nay, worst things outright — I’ve ever seen, written on what Benny Cobbett described as a “shopping list”.

Later on, Josh Kerr appears, announcing himself by walking in and belting out Dirty Old Plough, like some well-dressed nymph from the music realm, fresh from a day at the horses. He orders a jug of Guinness and, well, life is good. The rain continues to trickle down, the Plough are making noise all around me, Sean McGurn is beating people at pool, and there’s quite frankly nowhere I’d rather be.

A wonderful day and a wonderful win — spearheaded by the fastidious Spence, who did incredibly to force a result in under four hours and is slowly, bit by bit, generating a quite special vibe in this 2nd XI, who head into the season foaming at the mouth, hungry for much, much more.