It’s just far too hot today. The sun’s like a sneaky keyhole view of hell; the air is fat and glossy with heat, shimmering off the tarmac like fumes from fuel.

Leo Nieboer gets to the Griffin at 11:20 and he’s literally the only person there. It’s kind of eerie. The Griffin is totally unpredictable in this way: some Saturdays it’s replete with parents and children, some mysterious event happening in the clubhouse, and on other days it’s like The Shining.

Everything is locked, so Nieboer goes around unlocking things and gathering equipment, and even this minor exertion leaves him drenched in sweat, his gooch a waterfall. Thankfully, some Plough show up to help out in their various ways. Damon Greeney and Chris Butlin help move the sightscreens; Suri Poleboina brings Nieboer a Jaffa cake flavoured iced coffee, which is… an acquired taste; and Giordy Diangienda, who was driving trains at 05:00 today, brings Nieboer filthy stories.

Ploughmans win the toss and bat. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief, huddling under a small bit of shade under one tree — the Griffin’s only respite against this maddening inferno of a bank holiday. Nieboer and Poleboina go to work.

Well… Suri does. Nieboer, having made 0 last week, is just trying to stay there. So while he simply survives, Suri thrives, racing to 35 (25), smiting some beauties with pure power and precision, taking Plough to 52-0 off about eight overs before clothing one to mid off.

After Tom Lonnen departs for 2, Butlin and Nieboer get things going again, putting together their second 50 partnership at the Griffin in as many games, the 2s axis of debauchery and evil finding a nice rhythm out there, for the most part. Nieboer does nearly barbeque him twice. Butlin has a slightly less serene expression about him — conscious, perhaps, of how today — baking hot and batting first — is a designated ‘cash in day’, a real day to score runs, and also his groin, which has not been quite right since last week.

And then his groin does go. With Butlin on 22* (42), the pair push for a two, and upon turning Nieboer sees his vice captain and dear friend splayed embarrassingly on the floor, writhing in pain, cursing quietly to himself. He fancies batting on, just pinch hitting, but Nieboer tells him to f*ck off, and then proceeds to join him not long after, bowled for 38 (86).

Yanni Baveas has turned up and he’s being characteristically helpful — getting drinks in, offering to umpire, scoring, touching Nieboer’s bottom, and so forth. It’s a shame he’s wearing an Arsenal shirt, because Nieboer is absolutely sick of seeing that godawful red and white everywhere, by this point. He’d rather see the bloody Khmer Rouge trolling the streets of London.

Back on the pitch, Nicko Dowell and Tom Elmslie are trying to move the game along. But it’s hard. Raynes Park are bowling well, hitting a good fourth stump line, allowing their captain to stick with a relentless 7-2 field. The innings is a bit like Butlin right now: moving forward but with difficulty, without its usual panache, kind of hard to watch.

Nicko does nail one six, and Nieboer, stood at square leg, thinks maybe we’re about to see some absolute destruction. But then he doesn’t quite time the next one and gets caught. Callum Daley comes in and, with Elmo, produces a lovely 50 partnership, finishing on 27* (20) and 39* (41) respectively, taking Plough to 213 — a good total but also, Nieboer reckons, about 30 short of where they could have been.

At tea, Nieboer heads over to the shed and sees the wonderful Claire Hood in there, arranging the spread.

“I’m back!” she says.

“You’re back!” Nieboer exclaims, lost for words, delighted that last season’s illustrious and highly coveted tea lady — responsible for making unbelievable things like green curry and chilli con carne – is indeed back, having initially decided she couldn’t make time for it this year, despite Nieboer’s many entreaties and possibly illegal bribes and barely disguised love for this happily married woman.

The boys are delighted. She’s made onion bhaji wraps, proper sausage rolls with English mustard, flapjacks, top tier sandwiches, and selection of other sweet things.

“This lady knows her way around a carrot cake,” Butlin grins, his mouth full like a chipmunk. Tom Lonnen agrees, digging in silently, nodding to himself.

The second innings is painful, for many reasons. Despite two early Giordy Diangienda wickets, giving us a good start, Plough find themselves bogged down in a quagmire of questionable umpiring decisions, inconsistent bowling, and endless ugly shots that keep maddeningly going to the boundary.

Nicko hits one guy on the toe — like, the base of the stumps — and the umpire says it’s going down leg, the first bit of humour Raynes Park have come out with all day. Nieboer is worried Nicko is about to have an aneurism. Butlin, who can’t move, keeps stretching to grab things at gully, then doubling over in a very-hard-to-watch paroxysm of pain, his face all red and bald and scrunched up. Nieboer can see the blue veins bulging in his head.

It’s also just exhausting, being out here. Keeping energy levels high is near impossible in this sapping weather. Nieboer is heat-crazed. He may be dehydrated. Everything looks beige and powdery.

Even so, with 10 overs to go, Raynes Park still need 60. The game is in the balance. A few 1s players are here, cheering us along, having lost their game over on the DSG unexpectedly early. Nieboer brings back Qammar Jamshaid and Damon, and despite a wicket from the former it just isn’t our day. The ball keeps squeezing through. Nieboer can’t work out whether his fields are wrong, or the pitch has just flattened out, or if Raynes Park are just getting lucky, their cross batting approach more effective than Nieboer’s preferred steady-accumulation-bat-the-overs style. Perhaps it’s a mixture of all three. Either way, they win the game with a couple of overs left, and Nieboer’s almost too zapped to be sad. League cricket, man. A £13 lobotomy.

But here’s the thing about Ploughmans Cricket Club: it’s impossible to be sad for too long. Almost as soon as Nieboer reaches the DSG, he’s in fine spirits, showing off his bum to Dom Scott, who simply cannot believe how hairy it is. He goes over to comfort Sean, stranded on an island of personal grief. Nieboer remembers how it felt to lose his first league game as captain — a sort of peritonitis of the soul, a sickness of the cells, a sense of doomstruck responsibility, like how Oppenheimer felt when he made that bomb. That’s one thing even the DSG can’t shift. “You get used to it,” Nieboer tells him.

Butlin is back in good spirits. He’s staving off the pain by rattling out his favourite songs, getting us all to join in. We get into the Nigel Stevenson song, with its many variations, and the lyrics are so foul and lurid that Leo Connolly’s fiance, Liv, literally has her mouth agape in horror, refusing to believe what she’s just heard.

Over in another corner of conversation, Nieboer asserts that Dom Scott enjoying James Bond should make him eligible for an advanced DBS check of some kind. We start to think about which Plough would make a good Bond, and we decide that Damon would make most sense — all smooth and elegant, various Mediterranean baddies swooning at his feet.

“An eight pint jug,” he’d say, walking casually up to the bar, looking resplendent and determined in his tuxedo. “Shaken not stirred.”

Back in Butlin’s corner, he’s come up with a new song alongside John Walton, called “Going Out the Ground”, to the tune of The Jam's "Going Underground". It’s a more improvisational song; you go round a big table and everyone does a verse, and a big chorus each time as everyone joins in, or huge boos when someone gets it wrong. Some examples below:

“I’ve got my run up wrong, now it’s pitching short,
I’m going out the ground, out the ground!”

“I’m overcompensating, now it’s really full
I’m going out the ground, out the ground!”

“I’ve only had two beers but I’m really pissed,
I’m going out the ground, out the ground!”

“THAT’S NOT FOURTH STUMP, THAT’S NOT FOURTH STUMP,
I’m going out the ground, out the ground!”

As darkness finally falls, Nieboer shoots off into the night, whipped and beaten but not exactly dismayed. He spends basically the next two days at Shadwell Basin, absolutely lashing himself into the algae ridden but satisfyingly cool water, drinking heavily, eating little, handing cigarettes to various almost-naked people, meeting a bunch of strange characters — from pro-skaters to fortune tellers to one guy whose left leg was paralysed, couldn’t swim, but nonetheless insisted on going in. One guy bashed his head on a railing and flopped into the water like a dead fish, and we had to fish him out.

It’s a fun old time, with much laughter, but nothing compared to that special feeling at the DSG on Saturday — when 1s and 2s, both defeated, came together, laughed for a good three hours straight, and left with smiles on their faces, along with that goddamn “Going Out The Ground” song, which is still in my head on this sweltering Tuesday afternoon.