Walking into the ground way earlier than required — a consequence of unfounded London Marathon-based transport anxieties — I notice one thing: it’s so f*cking cold. It’s obscene how cold it is. Play is over an hour away and I can’t feel my fingers. I’m going to die out here. I’m going to die with an average of 2 for this season. Brilliant. The game yesterday, at Shepperton CC, was at least played at a ground surrounded by trees, shielding us from the wind for the most part. Not so here. In the yawning abyss of space here at Hackney Marshes the wind cuts through you like a torrent of little blades. On Google it says it’s 8C; it feels more like -8C.

In better news, the deck looks exceptional. I can’t quite believe how good it is. It’s something you’d get in July, not April. The outfield, too, looks fast; plenty of purchase for your shots here. The consensus among the Plough is clear: bat first. Grayzer believes it’s a “280 wicket”, and tells openers Leo Nieboer and Harry Edmonds that they could well and truly “cash in here”.

I go inside for a piss, and upon returning, Grayzer is talking about how “it’s better to be out there running around than sitting down, anyway” and I’m confused. Why this talk of fielding? It transpires that’s what we’re doing. Grayzer won the toss and… chose to field. For a moment everything goes white; I can hear ringing in my ears. I’m about to explode. It’s the worst U-turn witnessed on these shores since the days of Liz Truss. These bowling captains have gone too far: they should be fined, prosecuted, and possibly even sentenced to hard labour.

I could be batting on this road right now, but instead I’m at long on, watching balls sail over my head. One of their openers is teeing off and for an over or two it looks concerning, but Grayzer and Matt Spencer find their lines, the latter clattering the other opener’s stumps to make the score 31-1.

As the game moves on, Grayzer’s decision to bowl makes more sense. I’ve calmed down by this point. With clouds above, the ball is nibbling around, and the pitch is deceptively low and slow. Perfect recipe for some controlled line and length bowling, which is handy, because Liam has a couple of gorgeous first-changers: Hari Vignesh and debutant Niraj Thakka.

Having taken three wickets the day before, Vikki is full of bloodlust. He wants more, much more, and he streams in like he means it, hitting areas, and gets two more wickets. I almost want to kiss the boy. Something about that smile is so sweet, so pure, that I think maybe if I touch him, ruffle his thick hair a bit, some of that radiant light he holds inside himself will partly transfer to me, and fill the emptiness inside, and make me less sinful.

During Vikki’s spell, Tom Glynne-Jones demonstrates spectacular form with his chat. After coming up with a clever line for Liam’s second spell — “Oooh, 3pm, perfect time for a cup of EARL GRAY” — he has some material for Vikki, too.

“Hari Vignesh? More like Harry Potter, because this is a magical spell!”

“Let me see your Chamber of Secrets, Hari!” I boom back, trying to riff, but nobody bites; the Stoke Newington CC batter is disgusted. “That’s too far,” he says, shaking his head. I resort to shouting “EXPELI-BLOODY-ARMUS” after each dot instead.

At the other end, the real star of the show: Niraj. On his debut, he takes two wickets, including an impressive caught and bowled. But his wickets aren’t actually what stand out; it’s the sheer control of it, the economy. In his six overs his figures are 2-16. He bowled one wayward delivery; everything else was pure back-of-a-length channel, just outside off, every time. You could set your bloody watch to it. You could prescribe it to people with chronic illness.

For years, I’ve been crying out for this: not pace — anyone can do that — but relentless line and length, over and over again. In games like these, on a slowish pitch, it’s pure gold; the batters can’t get it away, and here it grinds the innings to a halt. With 7 overs left they’re 95-5, a precarious position, and it’s down to this lovely partnership between Niraj and Vikki.

After the game, Niraj talks about how he’d dreamed of playing cricket in England, and how today was a “dream start”. From my side of the fence, I struggle to see how swapping Australia’s sun-dappled East Coast, with its wonderful surf and flat decks, for playing in sub-zero temperatures in a grey park in East London, constitutes “a dream”, but I suppose different things turn on different people. No kink shaming on this here information exchange.

The stage set by these line-and-length wizards, Tom Glynne-Jones, perhaps energised by the Princess Diana joke I told him at drinks, takes a break from delivering Harry Potter-based encouragement to his teammates and takes four wickets in no time at all. That’s six wickets for the weekend, and I had the pleasure of seeing all of them. What’s amazing is how he doesn’t do anything exactly special — just floats it up there and puts it on a good length, consistently, coaxing batters forward. Some interesting learnings on this curious cold day: pace is good, and grabs headlines, but control, I’m slowly realising, is actually what wins games.

It’s been a splendid bowling performance. Stoke Newington are all out for 124, Niraj taking the final wicket. One more ball and Nieboer would have been bowling at the other end — the second time he’s been edged like this in as many days, which is in fact perfectly routine for weekends.

At tea, we enjoy some extremely tasty mini chicken doner kebabs, nicely spiced and filled with lovely greek yoghurt, and Liam Gray tells us about his first meeting with John Walton — a full-blown argument, conducted entirely in French. He goes on to tell us about the time John and some stranger got into a bar altercation — all because Walton shadow bowled at someone, who shadow batted it back, shadow appealed, and was told by this other man, shadow umpiring, that the shadow ball was in fact not out. He was incandescent, apparently, which is totally fair enough, given that it was, after all, absolutely smashing shadow middle and leg, about half way up.

Nine overs into the second innings, the game already feels over. Harry Edmonds is doing heinous things to the Stoke Newington bowling attack and it’s 72-0. Nieboer is positively frothing at the other end. Defending a low total like this, you need a couple of early wickets. What you don’t need is some wide-eyed long-levered gun hitting four sixes in no time at all against the opening bowler and completely ripping apart any notion of a ‘contest’.

Watching him from close quarters, you notice how Edmonds (who finished on 65, the top score of the season so far) is not your conventional ‘big hitter’. He doesn’t have big levers, like Duray; nor does he really move his feet, like Max Gumpert. With him it’s all timing. He stays dead still and waits for one in his zone and merely uses the full geometry of his arms to swing through the line and crack the ball further than most of us have ever cracked a ball.

After just a few overs, you could see Stoke Newington wanted no part of it. They went numb out there, adrift from the game like penguins on an iceberg, traumatised by this freewheeling Yorkshireman. They didn’t even bother to put in a gully for Nieboer, allowing him to score freely on his way to 37*. The whole thing was wrapped up inside 20 overs, Nieboer hitting the winning runs through — yep, you guessed it — backward point.

Credit to Matt Spencer, who umpired almost all of that second innings, and had the reassuring energy of a dad, without any of the Fear and Intimidation that a dad also inevitably brings.

After packing up, the whole Plough side, plus some Stoke Newington players, ended up in a pub appropriately named The Cock, where people pretended to not be sad about Coventry City coming agonisingly close to coming from 3-0 down to beat one of the worst Manchester United teams I’ve ever had the displeasure of watching.

A nice boozer, The Cock — one those small cosy pubs with wood panelling everywhere and tiny stools and an unnecessary selection of ales. Hector Barnicoat Hood, fresh from his red inker, was on especially good form — not just by explaining the vagaries of Ethiopian weddings and scaring Nieboer in the toilets but also through carefully goading Nicko Dowell into insisting that Jimmy Anderson — our beloved Burnley Express — isn’t actually that good, which led to a vicious back-and-forth lasting around 20 minutes that nobody came out of favourably.

A wonderful day, though, despite that venomous pub exchange. A special mention to new Plough Harry Payne and Aislynn Rogers, who both got TFCs but fielded diligently, brought good spirits, and didn’t even chastise their captain — like they should have done — when he decided to bowl first on an absolute flatty.

Plough On!