The below is a painfully accurate Prithu Banerjee impression of a Leo Nieboer match report intro:

Leo Neiboer wakes up, and head still pulsing gently from something untoward he put in his body the previous night, and he peers out of the window with what is, at this point, more hope than expectation. He is greeted by sizzling, relentless, unerring sunshine. This is not the weather for a headache, and it is not the weather for what is now also a queasy stomach. Neiboer wonders whether it is a portent for the day to come that he is already sweating, before he has even had time to crawl his way to a morning shit.

He arrives at the ground, and it is around now, squinting into the sun, that he tries to remember exactly what his team is. It is one that has been wrecked and pillaged by unavailability, broken fingers, and preemptive drinking for the England game later. The Thursday before the game was less about batting, and more about trying to dredge up a playable XI in between puffs of nicotine. He knows he has a Viking in there somewhere. Prithu has been dragged, kicking and threatening suicide, to play. Dave Yates, consummate Ploughman, has eagerly offered himself. Narvin is in there somewhere. And of course…

Giordy is there, and has immediately assessed the pitch.

‘Nah, this pitch is going to break up, you know. About 20 overs in, it’s just gonna break up, trust me.”

Nieboer nods sagely like he is listening, but really, his mind is now just that Family Guy monkey with the cymbals; he is thinking about the sheer state of ruin that he is going to put his body in eight hours later when the England game kicks off. His friend has a lovely little gaff out somewhere in Shoreditch, with a balcony that overlooks London, with a fridge full of ice cold beers, and a box of room temperature vapes that will need a good seeing to.

He trundles out to the middle for the toss, promptly loses it, and is told that Ploughman’s will be fielding.

It’s a great start from the boys, with Giordy at one end, and Damon Greeney at the other, some sort of yin and yang of line and length, bowling in tandem. Greeney strikes early, bowling their opener, and there is hope that this could be a short innings, leaving plenty of time for a few jugs and cold showers with the lads.

The number three disagrees, and it is, for a while, hard going for the Plough. He is launching anything in his vicinity, and is motoring along quite nicely. At the other end, their opener looks about 12 years old, but has the confidence to stand outside his crease every single delivery, before then taking a few steps down at the ball’s release.

Carl Viberg, flown in from Sweden like some sort of late Gyokeres deal, does much more than the Arsenal man has all season when he removes the number 3 for 53, stunting what could have been a really dangerous innings. When the Sinjun’s no 4 bat comes out, Girody greets him by giving him sincere batting advice, which confuses him immensely.

At the other end, Nieboer decides that, much like Thatcher, child protection rules are for the weak and spineless, and so he brings on Narvin Ganesh to put the very small, very brave boy back in his box. And it works. Finally, for the first time, the opener has to actually stand still because of the pace that Narvin is bowling at, and is eventually out.

Unfortunately, their No 5, S Baig, comes out with a big bat and about all the luck available this Saturday. Over the course of his innings, he must sky about eight attempted hoicks in the air, and they all land in no-man’s land. It is, as Neiboer knows, the teasing that is the worst part of it; the knowing that you could get exactly what you want, but seeing, over a period of time, that you will not. Much like a well practiced dominatrix, he slaps and teases, chops and caresses his way to a century which provides the spine of the Sinjuns innings.

Sinjuns finish on 253-7, which is a perfectly achievable target. A big part of this is due to the relentless, selfless energy of Dave Yates, who will not bowl in this match, and will later on, only face one delivery. He travels across the full breadth of this mercilessly hot ground, over after over after over, without a single complaint, without once in the entirety of the innings letting his shoulders drop. For forty straight overs, his fielding intensity does not once drop. He is responsible for a runout part way through, he is responsible for cutting twos into ones, he is responsible for stopping at least four boundaries. If you ever wanted to understand what it means to be a Ploughman, look no further than Dave Yates.

Neiboer heads to lunch, which seems on the surface, to be quite a good affair. There are sandwiches, there is some fried rice that goes down quite nicely, there are scones with jam and cream in an order than someone from the south coast of England would have a problem with, and there are even a bag of red and yellow plastic balls that Rob Mead almost chows down, thinking that they were beautiful heritage tomatoes.
Lunch is, however, not seen as good enough by someone on the oppo, who has a go at the poor woman in charge of it, and there is quite a bit of shouting and shoving going on. It is around this time that quite a few of the Plough find surprising, fresh reasons to suddenly find themselves downstairs, and away from this. Not Giordy though, who stays and watches, making extensive mental notes about exactly who said what to whom, and what the response was.

“Nah, cos obviously, that’s disrespectful. Other people ennit, they’d lie to you, but me, nah, I’m going to tell you the truth ennit. And obviously, yeah, that’s disrespectful. I would never talk to Jackie like that ennit, cos nah, that would be crazy. Obviously that’s how I see it, ennit, but yeah, it’s mad anyway.”

Giordy, had he been born in the 1500s, would have carved out an incredibly profitable niche as a town crier; it is a pity that he was born in this generation, in this team. He trundles down the stairs, telling several members of Sinjuns what happened upstairs, gets to the changing room, tells every member of our team, wanders outside, tells Dave Yates who is calibrating the iPad, walks over to the Sinjun 1s, tells them, wanders over to a small girl who has suddenly appeared from nowhere holding a bowl of crisps, he tells her, he tells Prithu, he comes back into the dressing room and confirms that it was mad disrespectful obviously, and that while everyone else might tell you lies, he will only tell you the truth, and then he disperses, like some kind of Paul Revere, clipclopping into the sunset, his voice still carrying astonishingly well even when you thought he had disappeared from sight.

The batting innings is, almost universally, silly mistakes and shaking heads. It starts with Nieboer who dabs one, runs the first, turns as if it is the last ten overs, and is sent back by Van Naidoo, who has ascertained there would only have been another run there if they had started sprinting from the very first millisecond. It is barbeque weather, and the captain of the Plough has duly (self) acquiesced.
Van, who was going quite well on 16(21) is then bowled, having looked like he was settling into the innings. Prithu walks in for his first league game of the season, and at this stage, which version of him will turn up is entirely in the air.

He is initially circumspect, happy to have a look at a few, patting them away. Things pick up when he flat bats a four over mid off, and then in the next over, hits a four over long on and follows it up with a six that leaves the ground, requiring a bevy of players at the boundary fence to politely ask various passing strangers to pick the ball up from across the road and lob it back. In the next over, he receives a filthy half tracker first ball, and duly obliges by top edging a ball to midwicket.

Every batsman that follows is more of the same. Yanni out for 16 (25), Rob Mead is out for what was until that point a beautifully crafted 22 (30) before floating one to a fielder; the umpire hears him vocally cry out ‘don’t you dare’ the moment the ball leaves the bat. Whether he is talking to the fielder, the ball, or himself is a question that we may never find an answer to. If it was indeed the fielder, then unfortunately, the fielder did not listen.

Narvin, who has bowled really well in sweltering heat until this point, spends about twenty minutes gradually adjusting Prithu’s helmet for the perfect fit. The back screw is turned gently, the chin strap is adjusted five times. Narvin walks out, plays a front foot defensive first ball, and is bowled.

The real light of this innings is Damon Greeney, whose batting is a template for how everyone else should have batted. Even after bowling his full stint, he is still out here running every single that he can. He rotates strike, he clubs the bad balls with real ease, and he refuses to do the dumb shit that the people around him have done. He ends up top scoring, but it is, however, at this point, not enough, and the Plough slowly succumbs to a defeat.

Nieboer considers having a drink here, but the ground is cursed, and there’s a sort of evil juju around it. He considers the pubs nearby, but realises the distances that he will have to travel to shower and then head to that Shoreditch balcony, which by this point is calling out to him like one of the sirens in the Odyssey. There is the lure of oblivion and the complete erasing of this match from his memory. He packs his bags, and he, Prithu and Van hop into Girody’s car to be dropped off back at Tooting Bec station. The conversation along the way is a rehash of the towering six that Benny hit off Giordy, and three of the members of the car are considering whether it would go for six or twelve, while one member is now arguing that it is probably being caught at short mid off.

The station comes quickly, and the Plough are still top of the league. Next week, they get to do it all over again.

Match report from Prithu "Pretty Boy Nibbler Impersonator" Banerjee