Unfortunately, due to various teeth-grinding work deadlines and a potential oncoming cold (and absolutely not because I got a duck in this game), this report will be limited to some bullet points. Please accept my apologies. Normal length to resume next week!

• Waiting at Tulse Hill for the Lewis Wilby-mobile, it’s a sublime day: the sun beams through, and I sit outside a coffee shop very happily, sipping iced coffee and smoking one Sterling after another, quietly observing posh Lambeth people coming back from runs and purchasing overpriced croissants.

• An hour or so later, the sun has gone behind the clouds. It’s cold. And the score is 9-4. Leo Nieboer, Oli Lonsdale, Alex Jullienne and Ollie Tenant are all out for f*ck all, Nieboer and Cake triggered by Robbie Allatt, who definitely won’t wake up to discover a horse’s head in his bed at some point this week

• Wilby and Nicko Dowell mount a recovery, but you can tell it’s not easy out there. The ball keeps low and sticks in the pitch, making it very difficult to hit through the line. Even Nicko, one of the club’s best hitters, can’t really get it away. Wilby departs for a well-made 25. It’s 55-5.

• John Ryves plays one of the most chaotic yet admirably fearless knocks I’ve seen. He swats one to the boundary, slices two drives over slip, falls over a few times, and dances down the wicket to a guy who’d maybe yielded, like, 5 runs in four overs. He’s out for 9.

• On the sidelines, Ollie Tenant asks us whether we’d rather be locked in a room with a crocodile, bear, or tiger. We all agree on crocodile. Some of us even reckon we could dominate the f*cker: just go full Steve Irwin on him, legs on either side, arms clasped around its jaw. I counter that being in a cage with four angry peacocks would be way worse. Nobody agrees. I try to emphasise how those things can slash you to shreds, but, again, nobody bites. I think about an old Polenesian ritual where people would indeed get locked into a cage with those things, to see who can last the longest, with the winner receiving fruit and sexual favours as a reward.

• Oli Lonsdale comes in from umpiring 33 overs and tells Nieboer that it’s going to be okay. I ask him if he’s sure. He says he is. I ask him to let me know if things are still gonna be okay in a couple hours, because I’m really not sure. He goes on to tell me that it will indeed be okay, several times, and even gives me a forehead kiss, which was particularly nice.

• Nicko chops on for a gutsy 45, ushering in the man of the innings, on his debut: Robbie. Alongside Hari Vignesh, the pair compile what turns out to be a match-winning partnership. Robbie, in particular, grabs the eye, playing some proper cricket shots on his way to 59* (61), including one glance of his legs that makes me do an audible ‘Coooh’. Pigeon stuff, basically. They take Plough to a very respectable 197-8.

• At tea, I notice we’re well placed for some plane watching. Sitting in the sheds, you can see those big birds taking off from Heathrow, running at about 2,000ft. I see some usual suspects on my Flightradar24 app — Doha, Madrid, Oslo — and one leaving for Frankfurt, which my mother, weirdly, was on. Nicko asks me what my favourite type of plane is. I tell him I’m not that into planes. “So you’re not a complete virgin, then,” an opposition player says. “Nah,” I say back. “I’ve done hand stuff.” Hand stuff then becomes a theme of the day. It occurs that cricket is indeed just hand stuff without the release. It’s bad edging, done outdoors.

• Oli Lonsdale and Lewis Wilby are producing some fine hand stuff of their own. The former takes a pair of wicket maidens, bowling two completely unplayable inswingers, one of them just clipping off stump. Standing at slip next to Nicko, I’m so excited I want to start barking. Wilby claims a caught behind and another wicket soon after. The oppo, like us, are four down for spit.

• Hari Vignesh is bowling some lovely tight stuff at first change. He claims a deserved wicket, pushing Plough closer to the line.

• At the other end, there’s a kid Nicko and I haven’t ever seen before: Sam Howes — who, it turns out, is a Damon Greeney prodigy. And he is, like, a kid. “Can’t even buy a jug, can he?” Nicko muses. “Can’t do a lot of things,” I mumble back, remembering that weird period before 18 when you wanted to do everything — legal and illegal — but had no money or clout or knowledge on how to actually do any of it. What he can do, it turns out, is bloody rag them. His second ball is perfect, spinning in to hit top of off. For the rest of his spell, which he finishes on 1-19 off 8, I’m just shouting “OOOOH YESSS GARY!!” at him after every good ball. “NICE GAZZA!” “BOWLING GAZ!!”

• I’m warming to my role: score no runs, don’t bowl, do nothing in the field — just stand at slip, arms folded, babbling whatever sort of insane nonsense comes into my head. Real Sunday gear. As Putney make a recovery, my target becomes an especially portly bloke who’s blocking everything and pretending he hasn’t been out twice already, caught behind then stumped, neither given. There’s a man batting in chinos, and I ask him if he agrees with my notion that Hand Stuff and True Love are both making a comeback this year, and any danger of a shot, or something at least vaguely interesting, and whether I can join him for cocktails after. The portly bloke is run out, failing to complete a single to the boundary.

• The tail briefly rallies, but Niraj Tailor’s good control and Lonsdale’s third bowled of the day — coming right after being hit for one of the largest sixes I’ve ever seen — gives the Plough a 51-run victory.

• In the clubhouse after, they dish out a series of rewards, including ‘Dick of Day’, which nobody deserves more than Nieboer, after all the hand stuff talk, but goes to Robbie — for triggering two of his top three, then going in and hitting fifty himself. Reward winners receive a shot — some horribly sweet rum that I spill partly down my top.

• Nicko, Wilby and Nieboer head for the Wilby-mobile. It won’t start. Nicko orders an Uber, and as soon as the Uber arrives, the Wilby-mobile does start. We grab some roadies and zoom off to the DSG for another evening of getting intimidated by Jo Hockings in the urinals and wondering why on earth Sean McGurn keeps buying cider jugs and, of course, desperately avoiding the grim prospect of going to Hootananny, the evening ending with me on the pavement, covered in my own vomit, asking Oli Lonsdale — who left hours before — whether it’s all going to be okay. Will it? Anyone?? Please text 07501280033 if you know. Thanks.