Ahead of the game, it was roundly believed we’d be lucky to get an hour of play, let alone a full afternoon. We all believed that, apart from Nigel Stephenson, who doesn’t mess around with Met Office or AccuWeather like us dorks, and as a result couldn’t understand why we were being so negative.

Skipper Rehan Raees, mindful of a potential DLS situation, won the toss and put Plough into bat. Nieboer and Andrew Cosgrove started edgily, as you’d imagine, rain slowly trickling down, but progressed nicely, compiling a 75-run partnership in 17 overs.

Despite the good start, umpire and admin guru Max Wright wasn’t enjoying himself. Light rain consistently flew horizontally into his face, and he couldn’t understand why anyone would do this to themselves.

“This is vile,” he said. “This is absolutely vile.”

I tried to make him feel better by offering to do a ramp shot, or even a strip tease, if he preferred, but neither of these tantalising prospects managed to rouse him, and he went off soon after to be replaced by Giordy Diangenda, who in classic Giordy fashion turned up three minutes before play started in his mother’s car with a bleary-eyed Jo Hockings. Why anyone allowed them to be in a car together, I’ll never know.

Soon after Giordy came on for his much-feared umpiring stint, Cosgrove was bowled for 26 (50), ushering in the arrival of Alex Webster and absolute unmitigated carnage.

By this point in the innings, the message from Raees, standing on the boundary with his pads on, was very clear: GO BIG. The platform was established; now we had to make them suffer. Nieboer and Webster responded accordingly, throwing the kitchen sink at anything too short or full. This was RaeesBall and it was joyous. The pair racked up a 77-run partnership in no time, including a manic spell of 53 runs in 3.3 overs after drinks, and by the 25th over, Plough had passed 150, looking set to record a big daddy total.

Webster, naturally, led the charge, taking seven balls to get off the mark and then, like some mutant transforming in front of my very eyes, hitting 45 runs off his next 21 balls, including six fours and two sixes. The ground was encircled by narrow roads filled with moving cars, which made Webster nervous, because he kept hitting massive shots that threatened to take out various automobiles and maim innocent civilians and potentially drag the poor boy into all sorts of vicious lawsuits that even Plough’s impressive legal team wouldn’t be able to ameliorate.

Unfortunately, both Plough were out shortly after, Nieboer clothing one to cover for 77 (79) and Webster holing out to long off. Raees was bowled by a beauty, Wright hit a sumptuous four and then lost his wicket just before the rain came, and Hockings scored 1* (10) — an innings he would later describe as “solid”.

And that was all she wrote. The rain intensified; any further play felt more like a nice idea than an actual possibility. The time came to hunker down in the pretty clubhouse and contemplate how to spend our now-free Sunday afternoon, but not before enjoying a magnificent tea, replete with cheese cucumber sandwiches, pizza, homemade lemon drizzle, crisps, watermelon, and beer.

One by one, Ploughmen trickled off, probably tired of Jo’s awful chat and the fact that Nieboer, after batting 70 overs in two days in already-dirty whites, smelled and looked like a Wetherspoons men’s toilet.

An anticlimactic rain-affected ending to what promised to be a special affair, not unlike England vs Australia 2023. In our case, the what-might-have-beens are more painful to consider. Yes, I know it’s hard to think about that Stokes declaration, or being 188-1 at Lord’s, but it’s way more painful to contemplate the fact we didn’t get to see Joshua Kerr and Nigel Stephenson bowling in tandem, or Hockings fielding in light drizzle on one hour’s sleep. We didn’t get to see what kind of mad fields RaeesBall would produce, the sheer dazzling spectacle of Yanni Beveas behind the stumps, or Nieboer trying to bowl seam up. (That last one was shot down quickly by the skipper, sadly).

Such is life on this muddy little rock of ours. Hopefully next weekend brings sunnier spells. If the rain gods do mess us around again, they may end up having Max Wright and his big yellow lid on their hands.

Match report produced by Leo Nieboer