Much happened on this landmark day. We had tears and laughter, good cricket and comical cricket, high bursts of energy and moments of almost terminal fatigue. We had burgers and showers. We had fun and we also felt things. Conveying the full character of this fantastic curtain-raiser would require much more patience and time than my shrivelled cortex can currently muster. That said, we shall endeavour to have a crack. To wit:

Before the game

Like male goldfish racing towards spawned eggs on the ocean floor, the Plough arrive at the DSG in numbers. The weather is perfect: warm sun, no humidity, no real wind. The clubhouse, newly coated in blue and gold, looks sublime. Some Plough stand around and catch up. Others idly kick a ball around. Duray Pretorius attempts a header and breaks his glasses. A promising start.

The President’s XI, captained by Will Curtis and vice-captained by Simon Crane, win the toss. They elect to bowl.

“Let’s see what a good score is,” Curtis says.

Crane says something extremely threatening — something I couldn’t write down without severe legal implications.

The Plough gather outside the clubhouse. Liam Gray welcomes us. Today’s Club Day, and the trophy we are playing for, is dedicated to the late Patrick Gledhill, a Ploughman of many years who sadly passed away in December 2023. Simon Carson reads a eulogy brilliantly composed by Tom Lonnen that touches every heart present. The love for this man is so strong, so clear, that you can almost see it shimmering in the Spring air. I personally never met Paddy, but from everything I’ve heard, it’s clear that this man was a rare breed — always bringing others up, always emanating absolute kindness, even in the face of overwhelming personal difficulty. In today’s Darwinian hellscape, those qualities are a true gift — and an example to the rest of us.

Leon Parks later tells me a story about Paddy that I relate to instantly. On one club tour, in a 40 over game, he batted 39.5 overs, scoring 36 runs in the process. On the last ball of the innings he attempts a huge almighty swing and gets clean bowled. What a man.

You are missed dearly, Padre.

1st innings

Tears still in our eyes, club president Robert Cox says: “Now, go play some cricket!”

So we do. Tom Lane and Andrew Cosgrove open up. Lane hits an extremely good-looking 30* with those spectacular long thespian levers of his. The latter is deeply unlucky, spooning a shot to gully that Leo Nieboer would only take maybe once in 20 attempts, ushering in the star of this first innings: Ean Smith.

Nobody has trained more ahead of this season than Smith. He nets almost every day. Sometimes he nets twice a day. At Brockwell Park the other week, he told me he’d bowled 20 overs straight, by himself. 120 balls. His appetite to improve is hyena-like. And it pays off here. The gritty left-hander plays an anchoring innings, staying out there for a good 10 overs or so, using the pace of the ball nicely — including one especially impressive late cut off Rohan Paul.

Umar Iqbal is less fortunate. Seeing him walk out, Nieboer gets dangerously excited. Something about the chisel-jawed athlete strolling towards the crease arouses his nastier instincts. He gets not just one rather generic sledge — “Into the tail now, boys!” — but also has to hear Nieboer tell his teammates that “Umar hates cricket, and we’re going to make him hate it even more”. Really uncalled for. He then gets triggered first ball. Thanks, Umar!

Nicko Dowell comes in and does heinous things to the bowling of Justin Cash, who hadn’t even met the bloke before. Quite the introduction. These weren’t even bad balls; Dowell is just effortlessly powerful and good. Tom Elmslie, Merch and I agree that the 20 overs we’ve spent out here feels more like 90. The Chairman’s XI finish on 128-3.

2nd innings

Sean McGurn and Nieboer open for the President’s XI. At one end, McGurn scores 30 runs off 11 Carl Viberg deliveries — all of them boundaries, none of them coming off the middle of his bat. At the other, Nieboer absorbs a maiden from Chris Roden Smith and then throws his wicket away with one of the worst pull shots ever attempted by man or beast, caught impressively by Bakary Saidi.

Wickets tumble. Duray is pinned by Rahul for 0. Elmslie gets cursed by his girlfriend.

“He’s always moodier after scoring no runs,” she says to me, then pauses for a second and looks into the distance. “Oh, no…”

I turn around and Elmslie is a heap on the floor, dismissed, humiliated. I haven’t been watching since my dismissal. There’s a high number of Plough here — alongside various partners and friends visiting the DSG for the first time — and it’s much more fun floating between them and losing cigarettes to the usual suspects than watching this.

That said, Jo Hockings and new man Jacob Geraghty (nicknamed Cupcake due to him being a slightly less thicc version of Alex Julienne AKA Cakey Two Eyes) play splendidly, plundering shots down the ground. The President’s XI finish on 139-9 — a lead of 11 runs, but only with five wickets left for the second half of the game.

We saunter inside for an extremely enjoyable tea. Giordy is dangerously drunk already. The Grand National is on the TV, and he keeps saying that he “knows steeplechase — trust me.” We don’t. Hockings has had about six beers but seems perfectly normal, and I can’t decide if that’s a sad or impressive thing. Elena Narozanski tells me that you can swim with stingrays in the Bahamas. They’re totally chill over there, apparently. I wonder what kind of Clockwork Orange-like tactics were employed to achieve this strange feat of subordination. Curtis and Crane debate how to navigate a potentially calamitous third dig.

3rd innings

Umpiring alongside Merch, I notice the pleasant din emanating from the crowd. Lord’s is known for its famous ‘hum’ — a slowly germinating cacophony of murmurs and guffaws that swells and refracts as more booze goes down throughout the day and culminates in a special kind of buzzing static by around 4pm. The same thing is happening here. The sideline is adorned with humans laughing and nattering away. There are dogs and babies and jugs. The afternoon is hot now. The light takes on that dreamy bright golden touch we have no doubt yearned for during these vicious winter months.

On the pitch, Curtis is playing a captain’s knock, supported by Hari Vignesh. His plan, he says, is to consolidate for the first 10 overs. The game takes on a distinctly test match vibe: the batting is going nowhere; the bowling seems flat; the crowd is barely registering the non-existent action on the pitch. Yet somehow it’s all very nourishing.

Liam Gray is getting restless on the touchline. He can’t understand this deliberate slow pace.

“Any danger of a shot, Curtis?” he booms from the touchline. A wider debate unfolds about whether this format is actually working. Vikki says he thinks it’s “fun and good”, which is enough for me.

Hockings and McGurn are back out there now. The pair demonstrate their class, taking the President’s XI towards a respectable lead. McGurn, in particular, looks unstoppable. Then, out of nowhere, as the game seems to be drifting towards a great inevitable nothing, he smashes a cut shot straight into the huge mitts of Viberg. It’s a monumental moment. After being plundered by him in the first innings, Viberg gives Sean one of the most incredible send-offs I’ve ever seen, invoking all the might of his Scandinavian ancestors in one great primal roar, his raised arms looking like tree trunks, right in the middle of the pitch — a thing so powerful and visceral I’m convinced it got me pregnant, right then and there.

Curtis and Hockings add some more important runs, the innings ending with a comical run out, completely the fault of the captain. Then again, barbecuing your teammates is an important captain’s trait. Just ask Virat Kohli. The skip is demonstrating spectacular form all round, so far.

The total is set. Chairman’s XI need to score 141 runs in 17 overs to win. It’s a tantalising equation.

4th innings

The light is fading now. Those shades of gold are getting weaker as the sun sets and the crowd begins to reach a steady saturation point, looking more and more like a collection of wax figures dropped from a plane and scattered across the edge of the DSG’s junior pitch. My brain is no longer working. I’ve had many beers by this point and all I can do is make animal noises.

Which is fine, as it turns out, because Curtis only has one simple message: get bang into these Chairman’s Chumps. We consider what tactics have been decided by captain Tom Glynne-Jones and vice captain Benny Cobbett. Will they go for this? Will they just kind of see what happens? Or will they drop anchor, making this last 90 minutes an entropic nightmare?

For the first four overs, it’s hard to tell, because Cobbett and Leo Connolly can hardly see the ball. The opening spell from Muhammad Waqas and Rohan Paul is absolutely ferocious. Rohan, in particular, with the wind behind him, delivers some terrifying deliveries, pouring through the crease like molten lava. One ball smashes Cobbett on the glove and makes the all-rounder jerk back in such a vicious way that his helmet strap ends up in his mouth. He’s dismissed shortly after. Viberg doesn’t last long either. Curtis wanted two early wickets and he’s got them.

The momentum switches again. Spinners come on and CRS hits nicely through the legside. McGurn comes onto the field and gets wrong-footed by a spinning ball. The crowd erupts, revelling in that rather English tendency to rinse the opponent’s best player. McGurn gathers the ball again the next delivery, prompting a classic fake cheer, reminding me of Nathan Lyon after Headingley. At least you’ve got a good salad, Sean.

New player Harry Bray also looks impressive. Oli Lonsdale smashes a lovely six that he made me promise I would mention in this here report. With two overs left, the Chairman’s XI need 34 runs. It’s doable. 78 overs have elapsed and we still have a game here. Despite the many lulls and moments of seemingly indefinite atrophy and feverish discussions on the sideline about Whether This Is Good, the untried test match format is serving up a nice little finish.

Vikki bowls the penultimate over and keeps it tight. There is no longer a game here. The affair ends as a draw — just how Paddy would have liked it — under a thick blanket of low-hanging clouds. We make our way in the direction of Bad Jake, who is cooking an almost unbelievable amount of sausages.

A number of us are extremely red. We hadn’t banked on the sun doing this. I don’t respect April sun. Never have. But here my skin makes me look like a child on the verge of an earth-shattering tantrum. Oli’s neck looks raw, like the skin of a newborn baby. Liam Gray is a shade of red so disturbing that Hockings and I briefly consider whether he should be studied, for research purposes.

It’s been a beautiful day. As night comes in the jugs rate increases dramatically. We sing Dirty Old Plough and a few other classics, and our hearts are full. Months and months of bleakness are over. We are back. We are in the bosom of the best club on earth and we are finally together again and we have so much to look forward to. What a blessing. Plough the F*CK on.