At 12:00 we had a message from Max Gumpert saying it was just him and the oppo at the ground. It was suggested that that might not be unfair sides. Little did we know. It turned out they thought it was a 12:30 start, rather than them being ultra keen. The rest of us eventually turned up and we got underway at the scheduled start time of 13:00. Statics won the toss and chose to bat.

Spencer and Walton opened the bowling and bowled beautifully. Walton was bowling big, hooping inswingers, and both bowlers were two fast for one of the openers, who looked like he wouldn’t last long, and sure enough Spencer eventually cleaned him up for a duck. Walton got the number 3, also for a duck, also bowled.

The other opener said he only plays three games a season, but he looked in better nick than that, dispatching anything on the leg side, and quite a lot that was on the off side. Nevertheless, they were only 63/2 at drinks, and we thought we were well in the game.

Two overs after the break, Carson got the number 4 as tried to hoik across the line, played the shot about 2 minutes too early and got bowled. Jay Patel bowled really well, and picked up his second Plough wicket as the good opener was caught by Spencer on the point boundary. When Carson picked up his second wicket, we still felt we were well on top of the game.

And then they picked the scoring up. Perhaps they noticed that one of the legside boundaries was actually quite short, and started hitting towards it. After a bit of a partnership, Britto bowled Gopi for 38, which he was very happy about.

Despite the flurry of boundaries, we still didn’t realise how quickly they were scoring, to the extent that when one of the batters was applauded and persuaded to retire, we thought it must be for a 50, but actually it was his ton. They ended up scoring about 100 off the last 10 overs.

Despite that late onslaught, they still only finished on 239/6. 240 from 40 overs seemed easily gettable, especially on a pitch that everyone was saying was a 250 pitch. Britto hit the 6th ball of the innings for 6, and we were up with the rate immediately. Unfortunately Cosgrove was cleaned up very quickly, and Britto didn’t last much longer.

There then followed an excellent 106 run partnership by Gumpert and Boughton. One of them got their 50 off 50 balls, with 4 sixes. The other took 62 balls with only one 6. Of course the slower one was Gumpert. Once Boughton was out, it was clear that as long as Gumpert stayed in we would probably win, so it just needed people to stay with him. Baveas did his bit with 3 in a partnership of 40, and Patel added a momentum boost with 27 off 20 balls.

We began to suspect that the 12:30 start was not what time the oppo thought the start was, but the time they were hoping to start because they knew how long it would take them to bowl their overs. The innings dragged on and on. ‘Statics’ was presumably a reference to their over rate. People were starting to get worried about missing the England match, kick off at 8pm. Perhaps that influenced the next three batters ,who were all out for ducks, maybe trying to finish things off quickly.

But then Walton came in and batted very sensibly, taking singles to get Gumpert on strike and seeing him to his century, before securing the win with a 4 with two balls to spare. We haven’t seen much of Gumpert at all this season, due to frustrating back problems, and this ton felt particularly special — a gutsy, back-against-the-wall display, more about fight and endurance than swashbuckling hitting. We are indeed blessed to have him back.

Carson wasn’t needed to bat, so he still needs those elusive four runs for his thousand for the club. We finished in time for people to disappear off for the football.

So it wasn’t quite Gumpert versus the Statics – everybody contributed to a good win – but he was the main difference between the teams.

Match report from Andrew Cosgrove