It was a perfect May afternoon and an idyllic, tree-lined ground. The sun shone, and the pitch actually made a noise when you knocked on it. The months of rain seemed like a distant memory. The party atmosphere was helped by the DJ’s wide-ranging but 70s-inflected playlist, which covered Herbie Hancock, Althea and Donna, Chas and Dave, Metallica and Daft Punk. He even threw in some bossa nova/jazz to keeps us all chilled at the drinks interval.

Of course, with the prospect of a warm afternoon and a flat deck, Parks lost the toss, and we were invited to field.

Viberg opened the bowling, and bowled well but without reward. Spencer opened from the other end, and soon picked up the first wicket. The ball was hit out into the covers, where Hockings was presumably reminiscing about whatever it was he was up to at 3 am that morning. He finally looked up as the ball was travelling over his head, stuck up a hand, and that was the breakthrough. Another two to Spencer followed quite quickly.

Azarul replaced Viberg and got two wickets in his first over, including the now-familiar sight of a batter looking back in bewilderment, trying to work out how that ball had ended up crashing into middle stump. At that stage, they were 40-odd for five, with the bulk of those runs coming from the opener Connerty. We were starting to think about an early tea, and at least one of our openers was considering a leisurely run chase with no pressure to score quickly.

But Connerty found an able partner in Leach, and they put together a patient partnership. It wasn’t flawless – a lot of balls dropped into empty space, and a few difficult catches went down. They put on a hundred together, and just as it looked as though they would take the match away from us, Connerty went for 97. It was somewhat controversial – Poleboina was standing up to Vikki, Connerty had a huge swipe, Poleboina caught the ball and then threw at the stumps.

Not many of us had heard the nick, but Connerty owned up to it. Leach at the other end tried to argue that Poleboina hadn’t caught it because he threw it immediately, but both the striker and the umpire were satisfied that it was a catch.

Leach followed soon after for 53, also to Vikki, and we thought we were right back in it, but some lusty tail-end hitting boosted the score considerably from there. Spencer came back in time for the number 9 to loft him back just over Azarul’s head at long off. Next ball, Spencer tried to test him with, um, a straight full toss, which disappeared high over square leg and nearly clean over the adjacent field. Spencer picked up two more wickets to give him not only his first 5-for for the club, but the first time he had taken more than three.

In the end, they finished on 257/9. Overall, the fielding had been good, particularly from Burns again, although there were exceptions when Vikki jumped out of the way of the ball in the covers as though it was a rat going for his feet, and Spencer wanging the ball at Elmslie’s head to turn an easy single into five. Although it felt as though the innings had run away from us at the end there, skipper Parks was quick to point out that on a true pitch with a short boundary on one side, 250 was no more than par, and we were still well in the game.

After an excellent tea, it was time for our reply. The opening partnership was a tale of two ends, with Poleboina smiting fours and sixes as Cosgrove limped to 1 off 15 before being bowled for a very one-sided partnership of 30. Parks and Payne went soon after, but Poleboina was still scoring freely at the other end, until he tried one aerial shot too many. He perhaps thought he was safe hitting it towards the 12-year-old, but the lad had already shown he was a good enough fielder, and took the catch to give Leach his hundredth wicket for the Strollers, coming after his half-century earlier.

Burns looked good for a while, but he too was out, leaving us at 84/5. That was actually a much better position than the Strollers had been in, and we knew it would just take one big partnership, like in their innings, to get us in a position to win. For a while, that looked like it would be between Hockings and Elmslie, until Hockings holed out to long on. Elmslie carried on the good work, but despite some excellent batting and clean hitting all the way down the card, which kept the match alive longer than it looked like it might, we lost wickets too frequently. In the end, the legspin of Pandey was to much for the tail, and we were all out for 193, 64 short.

But it had been a fun game, and as we sat in the evening sunshine, enjoying Spencer’s jug and reminiscing about past tours, we felt there is always next Sunday.

Match report from Andrew Cosgrove