Making my way into the bowels of Croydon, it’s a perfect May Saturday. The sun beams through; there’s no wind. People of all descriptions are on route to their respective day-drinking assignments, the air carrying an expectant charged flavour — the sense that today people are Going To Have a Fair Crack.

In keeping with Leo Nieboer’s own mood, there’s also a tangible measure of anxiety knocking around. Crystal Palace are playing Manchester City in the FA Cup Final in a few hours — a chance to win a major trophy for the first time in their history — so as Nieboer moves south, plenty of people in red and blue are heading in the other direction, Wembley bound, wearing a kind of glazed stony expression, their faces not relaxed at all.

Speaking to Beddington’s skipper, he notes that they’re a bit light today, since many of their boys are among those glazed stony-faced Palace fans travelling north and getting ready to absolutely tear the arse off 10 to 12 pints in the sun, and my mind briefly drifts towards fellow Plough Alex Gordon-Walker, who will be gearing up to consume an almost unbelievable number of Madris, right about now.

Beddington’s skipper describes the deck as a “180 pitch”. I look down at said surface and, like always, don’t know what to make of it. Benny Cobbett reckons it’ll take plenty of spin. George Tunnacliffe thinks it’ll bounce. Stephen Britto thinks the ball will stay low, at times. In any case, the decision is out of Nieboer’s hands, who loses his third toss of the season and gets sent into bat.

Stephen Britto and Suri Poleboina head out there to open, following a last-minute decision from Nieboer to put himself four and swap himself with Britto — mainly because the latter scored over 150 runs last weekend and got out once, but also because Nieboer hasn’t been 100% on his order all week, given we have five openers and a depth so good that Tunnacliffe is down to bat at 9.

In any case, it’s a bad start. Plough are 34-3 after 7 overs. They’ve nicked Nieboer’s idea of opening with spin and have this older guy just putting it on a spot, while at the other end this 14-year-old who’s about 8ft is delivering some impressive inswing. Nieboer and Alex Jullienne have to do some rebuilding.

And rebuild they do. Nieboer and Cakey have batted together a lot, so there’s a natural sort of rhythm and a good measure of trust between the two. It all feels very smooth — apart from one moment where Cake strokes one into the covers and the pair, both ball-watching, collide while running between the wickets, Cakey really dropping the shoulder, Nieboer feeling contact and very much going down, bouncing off Cake’s solid form and landing flat on his back like some cartoon character.

“There was only one winner coming out of that,” Damon Greeney surmised later.

They put on 82, Cake departing for 37. Joey Anderson comes in and hits one of the best 16s I’ve ever seen, middling absolutely everything, but then he goes and Nieboer also goes for exactly 50, and at 145-7 Plough are in a spot of bother.

Thankfully, like I said, our depth is outstanding. I mean, how many sides have an 8 and 9 as good as Aman Jain and George bloody Tunnacliffe? It proves to be the difference in the long run — these two boys putting on nearly 100, Tunnacliffe (45 off 28) absolutely bludgeoning deliveries and forcing ones and twos and threes, Aman (36* off 31) with just the most sensational levers going. One cover drive for four is so good that Benny and I both climax at exactly the same time. Even a block draws an audible groan of approval. Who even needs Angus Osborne.

As the pair knock the air out of Beddington, Benny points out that every fielder has gone “double teapot” — hands resting on hips, the eternal sign of on-pitch mortification. And he’s right; I look around and count, yes, 10 double teapots, the only non double teapot their wicketkeeper — a rather young child who is quite good but also looks rather deflated, in his own preadolescent way.

Plough finish on 240-9.

Tea is rather nice indeed. They’ve got many of the classics: cheese and pickle sandwiches, really really thin slices of pizza, some anonymous cake — not to be confused with our well known and adored Cakey Two Eyes — as well as some rarer stuff, like roasties (which feel wrong on a day like this, the sun beating down) and brussels pate on bread, a lovely touch.

Back out on the field, the message is simple: build dots. Worship at the altar of dot balls. Take dot balls out to dinner. Give gentle forehead kisses and whisper sweet nothings into the ear of dot balls. Do that and we win the game, is Nieboer’s message, essentially.

And it’s just the perfect start. Damon Greeney — despite some tangible pre-game nerves — is as metronomic as it gets, just hitting fourth stump again and again, evincing all sorts of whooping noises from Suri, Nieboer and Benny in the corden and bowling their No.3. It’s exactly what the team needed from Greeney, and the same is happening at the other end with George Tunnacliffe, his first ball a wide and his second ball folding the poor child in half and bowling him.

After 16 overs, the score 60-2, Plough are in an excellent position. It’s as good a time as any for Jain and Cobbett, Nieboer feels. Jain, as always, is just impossible to hit, doing exactly what Nieboer has asked for, almost robotically churning out dots and drawing chances and generally making Beddington look a bit foolish.

Benny, on the other hand, is taking a more vibes based approach. He’s found a pair of wrap-around speed dealers with blue rims that might just well be the c*ntiest and most quintessentially South African piece of apparel I’ve ever seen, which is exactly what Benny was going for. When he put them on for his girlfriend, Sienna, she all but retched and collapsed at the sight of them, so Benny knew he was onto a winner.

And while Aman is delivering pure metronomic set-your-watch-to-it stuff at one end, Benny is producing all sorts at the other: one beamer that nearly kills their No.5, then the perfect through-the-gate ball to remove their captain and best batter. He takes two more wickets, then decides he doesn’t like that end, asks to come off, and Joey Anderson comes in and gets a wicket himself.

By this stage, we are in the death throes, Beddington needing to go at over 10s but only managing something around 5s. The light is soft and golden and everyone is tired, the main heft of today’s affair now behind us, the game’s destiny now preordained and playing itself out in its own sweet time.

The other end now freed up, Benny mops up the tail, finishing with six wickets — the first of his league career, rounded off by an excellent catch from Cakey Two Eyes and in the process completing a lovely redemption arc for the man, whose last league game for the 2nd XI was hardly a catching masterclass.

My mouth feels like sandpaper, so I head straight for the clubhouse and order a Guinness for Aman and a fruity cider for myself, as well as an apple and raspberry J2O that I down in one disgusting gulp. On the TV, I see that Crystal Palace, against all odds, have won the FA Cup. One short stocky and extremely pink-faced lad in a Palace shirt bursts into the bar, eyeballs floating around in his head, singing “Glad All Over”, slapping the backs of anyone within his range, insisting that he should be allowed to work behind the bar. One patron tells him to f*ck off. Another tells him he’s far too short, that he won’t even be able to see, back there. I head back downstairs.

It’s a lovely, dreamy warm evening. Benny buys a jug, then another. The oppo, who are a good bunch of blokes, also buy us a jug, because they have for some reason decided that we are also a good bunch of blokes. It’s delivered by a man who calls himself Beddington 4s’ “designated mouthy c*unt”, and I tell him that such a thing doesn’t make sense in the Ploughmans 2s. It’d be more a case of having a “designated good bloke”, once we actually get one in our side.

The light now almost gone, transitioning from a heavy gold to a pallid purpley dark bluish colour, we walk back towards Hackbridge station. Iskandar Eaton does a phenomenal job of rattling Cakey and Joey, the two Aussies in our side. We’re discussing the Ashes this winter, and of course the pair have little more to say than “5-0, mate” out the side of their mouths.

“It’s so funny that you guys actually believe that,” Iskandar replies. “Your team is old, finished, past its peak. Mitchell Starc will go at 10s. Labuschagne won’t get it off the square. Joe Root and Harry Brook are literally the best two batters in the world.”

Cake and Joey start nibbling, just a little, so Iskandar goes in for the kill.

“Let’s go through the combined XI. Obviously Crawley and Duckett open. You can have Labuschagne at 3. You can have him. Fine. Joe Root at 4, obviously. Harry Brook at 5 over Travis Head, any day of the week. Ben Stokes over Cam Green at 6. No brainer, that one. Jaime Smith OR Ben Foakes — literally either of them — at 7 over Alex Carey. You can have Pat Cummins at 8. All good. Brydon Carse and Gus Atkinson go in, naturally. Nathon Lyon as the spinner, you can have, if he even makes it to the Ashes.”

It’s some truly spectacular shithousery, but Iskandar isn’t even joking, and the force of his argument — made in that uniquely patronising we-are-the-center-of-the-universe British way — has me feeling somewhat patriotic, and now I believe it too, and can’t wait to see us win 4-1 and Joe Root score more runs than Donald Bradman in 1930.

On the Thameslink, as we sip roadies, I reflect on what has been a good day. We have 20 more points and the boys seem happy. Benny, of course, wants to keep it going, and gets off at Herne Hill with Aman, bound for the DSG.

Myself, Iskandar and Cakey are the only ones left. We’re talking about recurring dreams. Iskandar says he has ones where he’s playing a sport of some kind, and the crucial moment is about to come up for him — a shot at goal to win the game of something — and then his dream ends. Cakey has ones where he’s back doing exams.

I mention one of mine that consists simply of a tiny old Chinese woman looking down at me. Nothing else happens; she’s just looking down at me. She’s absolutely tiny, which means I’m either (a) lying down on my back looking vulnerably up at her or (b) am myself even more incredibly tiny than the woman. The woman has no particular expression and never says anything. Involved in the dream also in a menacing way somehow is a dog standing in the distance, motionless and rigid and also silent. That's it. That’s the dream. Saying it out loud, I realise just how messed up it is.

“Yeah, that’s f*cked, man,” Iskandar says, then heads off home to eat Chinese and watch golf. Now it’s just myself and Cakey, who realises he hasn’t drank water in about four hours. Off he goes at the next station, so it’s just me and my burnt lips, already thinking about our next game against Addiscombe and making it three wins out of three. For now, though, time to pass out and get stared at by that tiny woman some more.

PLOUGH ON!!!