It’s the kind of day that demands being near a vast body of water. Or perhaps just lying on a rock in the shade, very very still, like some sedated lizard. In other words: it’s f*cking hot. Even before he wakes up, Leo Nieboer’s bed is soaked with sweat. You can genuinely see his outline, like when police draw chalk around a murder victim’s body, his fetal-shaped fossilised image now slowly drying into a salty crust.

Not a day for standing in the glaring sun somewhere in Surrey, Nieboer thinks.

In any case, he drags himself to the dense unorganised human traffic that throngs Waterloo station on Saturday mornings and makes his way to Epsom, and thinks hard about what’s ahead, half listening to TMS, England once again unable to bowl out KL Rahul.

It’s a very new-look team this week, with a fair few making either their league debut or their first league appearance in years. There’s one guy making his Ploughmans debut: a man called Tommy Clout.

Seeing this rather excellent name — something from a Guy Ritchie movie, you’d think — on his team sheet earlier in the week, Nieboer does some digging. A quick google of ‘Tommy Clout cricket’ and, oh, he has a Wikipedia page. He has an ESPN Cricinfo profile. Ah, he’s played first class cricket for Otago. He’s bowled at Glenn Phillips. Okay. Interesting. Taking this all in, at 01:00 on a Tuesday, Nieboer is starting to feel a bit funny, down there.

As the week goes on, word about this ringer — brother of Simon Crane’s best friend — bounces around and swells and refracts, not unlike when Gabbo replaced Krusty on The Simpsons. He takes on a mythical status — accentuated by the fact that this left-arm former first class opening bowler doesn’t even have WhatsApp.

And so, when Nieboer finally claps his American pies on him, walking slowly into Alexandra Recreation Ground, the air fat and glossy with heat, he’s a little tongue tied. They walk out to the middle and do some typical getting-to-know-you chit chat, and Nieboer really doesn’t know what tone to strike. He’s a classically relaxed, genteel Kiwi bloke, extremely tall, with bucket hands, considerably nicer and less nihilistic than Simon Crane, who tells Nieboer that you should basically always bat first, unless it’s a green seamer — once again showing that Matt Spencer had it all wrong, as captain, and only really bowled first all the time because he didn’t want to wait to bowl.

Wallington only have seven players here at 12:40, so they forfeit the toss. Ploughmans are batting. Rob Mead breaks the lever to flush the toilet, somehow. Jay Patel and Michael Ainslie pad up and head out there.

Nieboer keeps his eye on Clout for the first ball, to see his reaction. It’s a classic league cricket first ball of an innings: low 50mph, dribbling down outside off, barely reaching the keeper. His face scrunches up slightly, a mixture of disgust and shock, like seeing someone suddenly projectile vomit at the bar.

When he heads out there at No.3, he gives them absolutely no respect, just plundering shots down the ground, the ball making heinous gunshot sounds off the bat not too different to Jannick Sinner’s baseline forehands. The shapes are sensational. And so, it should be said, are Michael Ainslie’s, whose technique is actually up there with anyone else at this club. Together, they add 126 in 20 overs, both manipulating the ball beautifully and making the pitch — very two paced and sticky — look a lot better than it is.

On the sidelines, Prithu Banerjee is rolling through his excellent rolodex of impressions, his Kiwi one — in homage to Clout — the most prominent.

“Aw, yus, I guess it was there to hut, wasn’t ut,” he muses, watching another missile fly onto the other side of the park.

Ainslie is eventually out for 51 (87), having produced the perfect opener’s innings. Nieboer comes in and basically gives the strike to Clout, who goes for 91 (72), and the innings starts to lose its rhythm somewhat.

Nieboer makes a scratchy 20 (25); Banerjee gets bowled second ball and thinks it’s a leg bye, starts actually running, and Nieboer has to sadly inform his dear mate that, um, he’s bowled. Jon Ryves hits a mercurial 21 (21), starting slowly and then hitting an unbelievable six. Qammar Jamshaid comes in and does some thwacking of his own, but goes for 18 (11).

Ploughmans finish on 236-7.

After a nice tea, featuring various kinds of ham sandwiches and those jaffa cakes that aren’t real jaffa cakes and have a weird, harder texture, it’s time to bowl. Before going out, Ainslie sits on the kit box and falls right through it, sending Wallington into hysterics. Nieboer tells them they should be ashamed they let him score fifty against them.

Clout has the new rock. The boys are frothing with anticipation.

And, yes, I can confirm: it is wheels. By his own admission, he’s rusty as hell and not coming off his full run up, but nonetheless it’s touching low 70mph territory and whistling through the air and absolutely thudding into Robert Mead’s gloves. Occasionally one flies past the nose. Nieboer and Banerjee, standing at 1st and 2nd slip, are enjoying themselves very much, now locked into their South African accents.

“Yah, I think you might want a helmet for this guy, bru.”

“I think you can come off your full run up, now, eh?”

It’s a joy to watch, but it’s Jay Patel — bowling his finest spell of the season, I’d wager — who makes the two early breakthroughs, using the pitch to induce a pop that flies to Lewys Evans, who’s nearly taken out by Niraj Tailor, who then in turn nearly concusses himself taking the next one, holding on brilliantly and then falling backwards in a nasty fashion.

Lewys then takes two wickets that are perfectly identical: full, outside off, driven, edged, caught by Clout at gully. He’s produced a lovely first spell, and taken his first league wicket before Clout has.

Qammar Jamshaid sprays someone’s pegs, as he likes to do, and Wallington are 65-5 at 15 overs, in all sorts of trouble.

But, as Nieboer warns the boys, they are by no means out of this game. And so it proves. The next 15 overs are not good for Nieboer’s blood pressure. Tom Glynne-Jones and Banerjee come on and, despite bowling some snorters, are on the receiving end of some classic cross batting nonsense, which, on this extremely fast and small outfield, is slowly but surely dragging Wallington back into this game.

We do get one breakthrough — a ball tossed up by TGJ, slapped over Jon at mid off, surely going for four, but then somehow his hand goes up and the ball just kind of sticks in there. It’s one of the most nonchalant grabs you’ll ever see. Truly remarkable.

Even so, Wallington’s No.8 appears to be their best batter, and still he’s battering the thing to all parts. By the 30 over mark, they need to go at 8 an over. Not unreasonable. Heads are starting to drop a little. The boys, who have acquitted themselves brilliantly so far, are getting a taste of league cricket at its most poisonous — that sense of feeling like you’re underwater, 70 overs deep into a contest and it still the result is not clear, nothing is guaranteed, the light now fading and sweat sticking to your skin and your brain feeling like a bunch of tangled cables being roasted over an open fire.

Time for some Clout, Nieboer reckons. He bowls a maiden, then removes their No.8, smashing top of off so hard that the bail flies all the way to the boundary — Niraj holding it up proudly, a big smile on his face, like a child who’s just found a £1 coin on the floor.

It’s the perfect response, taking the pressure gauge down from 100 to about 20. Now Patel is in clean up mode, once again using the pitch to dislodge their No.9 and No.10 in successive balls. The hatrick ball just beats the bat, everyone close in and howling like banshees, and suddenly, on this dreamy July late afternoon, everything feels good again.

Qammar needs exactly one ball to bowl their No.11, and that’s 20 points for Ploughmans CC. Nieboer’s tongue feels like a lizard’s been chewing on it. Definitely time for the pub. He invites Clout along, but he’s not interested, says he’s going to Amsterdam next weekend, which calls up all sorts of fascinating images in Nieboer’s mind.

It’s a lovely boozer we end up finding — one of those pubs you can’t really get in London, with a non busy smoking area and dark wood panelling and patrons with softer, fleshier, happier, more infantile faces, moving at a slower pace, happy for this and this alone to be the evening — not the springboard for some further foul behavior in a dungeon in the Harringay warehouse district, or whatever.

Lewys Evans is in excellent form, over beers. He gives us some stories from his time in Thailand. Having absorbed his captaincy for the first time, he tells Nieboer he could easily be a commander in the military. Nieboer smiles, fascinated by a scene that was suddenly running very vividly behind his eyeballs: basically being one of those commanders in WWI who sends his boys over the top, which naturally brings out his old-timey Englush voice. Now he’s imagining himself commenting on one of those VD parades:

“Now here’s Bleesdale and his friend Jarmen… and don’t the kids love it!”

“Prince Phillip, coming by!”

“WHERE’S MY F*CKING DINNER??”

Rob Mead is talking about going to an 80th birthday soon, which Lewys interprets as a big threesome opportunity. We start just naming former cricketers we like — a standard kind of activity for unimaginative men after three pints. Simon Jones. Dimitri Mascarenhas. Geraint Jones. Ryan Sidebottom. We could go on and on.

Sean McGurn calls me. The conversation goes something like this:

“Well done today, Nibs.”

“You too, brother.”

“How good is Clout.”

“He’s got the clout, brother.”

[Laughs] “Yeah? It’s wheels?”

“It’s wheels and shapes. It’s a real sense of safety, just looking at it. You’ll be seeing him very soon, I imagine.”

“Lovely.” [Suddenly very serious]. “Right, what sort of interest is there in you boys coming to Clapham Junction, then?”

“I’m not sure. I’d have to gauge. What are your interest levels looking like?”

“Strong. We’ve got Barron interest, Iskandar interest, Dom Scott, CRS, Alice, a few others. A lot of interest over here.”

“Wonderful. Let me get a sense from the boys.”

“Cool, love you, bye!”

There isn’t much interest — we’re all pretty beat — so Nieboer and Ainslie head back in Lewys’s extremely comfortable electric car, which he describes as a piece of shit, covering a range of subjects, including the favourite takeaway spots of our respective partners. Lewys’s miso soup likes Falafel & Shawarma in Camberwell. Ainslie’s lady is a big fan of Broritos. Nieboer’s girlfriend likes anywhere that does duck pancakes.

Yes… we like duck pancakes, over here in the Nieboer household. He likes 20 points on the road much more, though. And while Livia is right that you can’t eat 20 points — and that you really need to stop shadow batting naked and just bloody come to bed, darling — it’s also true that there are few better feelings out there — that winning feeling in the sun, with your dear friends.