07:00

The alarm goes off and F*CK ME it’s early. I can’t possibly be alive right now. I had planned to have an early Saturday night, but that got well and truly jeopardised by a semi-nude bowl off at the DSG, and now I’m suffering.

Poking my head out the covers like a stunned mole, a strong part of me wants to stay under there — just lie naked next to the fan and chain smoke all day while viciously critiquing Olympic sports I know absolutely nothing about. Right now, that sounds a lot better than going all the way to Gloucester to make absolutely no runs at a ground where I am most certainly cursed.

Limping around the flat, as the kettle boils, my mind turns towards those previous doomed visits.

The first time, in 2022, I drove there with Giordy and Aza, and completely killed my car while doing so. By the time my Ford Focus screeched up that godawful hill, smoke was streaming out of the bonnet, the clear West Country air now redolent with burnt clutch. The car never made it home; we had to fork out £300 for a taxi to Ealing and I had to pay £450 for the repair. Not the best return for facing seven balls.

Last year, I abandoned the idea of driving, for obvious reasons, and got the train there with Aza. He had to play on the opposite side and bowled me in the third over of the day with one of the best deliveries I’ve ever received. The rest of the day was an entropic nightmare. My phone then died on the train home, and the conductor made me fork out another £30 for a ticket, which isn’t much, compared to last year’s expenditure, but nonetheless pushed home the fact that going to Sheepscombe — beautiful as it is — will only ever end in madness, failure, and an irrevocable loss of funds, for this author at least.

09:00

A couple hours later, my mind is calmer. I’m in Carl Viberg’s clean and spacious Volvo, cruising west, and now life feels serene and exciting. We’re going on an adventure. We’re trading this sweaty concrete hellhole for the soft rustlings of rural life, and there are many Ploughmen coming along for the ride. Whatever happens in the next 24 hours, it will be interesting, and almost certainly damaging for my health. It’s an enticing prospect.

For the first 20 minutes of the journey, we trade Simon Carson stories — none of which are printable. Some of them still haunt me now. I then get to hear a bit about the story of Carl Vibes, the man behind the line and length, and it makes me realise how I don’t really know anyone at this club — how everyone has levels we will never discover. What I do know is that Carl Vibes is a wonderful guy with incredible reserves of love and patience, rewarded by a young family that adores him. I almost slightly resent it.

11:00

With an hour to go, I decide to have a little nap, the gentle sounds of TMS floating into my ears and rocking me into a pleasant state of semi-consciousness. When I stir, we’re in deep countryside. There’s a man in front of us driving a tractor that looks to be from the pre-war era. There’s not a (Amy) Morleys or even an off-licence in sight.

Yes… this is Polite England: village halls, quaint stone houses, horses and cows and sheep, frightened old people. There’s phone boxes that haven’t been graffitied or soiled, which is very jarring. People keep doing this thing where they wave at me and look me in the eye, and I briefly consider fighting them.

Pulling into the ground, there’s a giddy feeling among the Plough, because, well, it’s… breathtaking. No picture could ever do it justice. Everything before you looks like it would have done 500 years ago. From the clubhouse, there’s nature as far as the eye can see, and not a cloud in the sky. It’s the kind of shit William Blake would write about.

But not me. People are my subject, not nature, and thankfully more people are here now. Fred Gumpert, part of the Cheer XI, has brought along one of the largest sausage rolls ever created. Nicko Dowell arrives with an obscene amount of alcohol. It’s his first visit to Sheepscombe and he’s beaming at the vista before him.

Jo Hockings is not beaming. He’s visibly suffering, in fact, still very much reeling from being in the party stand at Edgbaston the day before. The man can barely talk; just shakes his head from time to time, sighing. He wasn’t even supposed to come today. He doesn’t really know why he’s here. Duray Pretorius is also struggling. After that semi-nude bowl off, I called it a night, but the 1st XI skipper kept going. Now he’s operating on three hours of sleep and his eyeballs are floating absently around his head. I don’t think he really knows where he is.

Carl Vibes throws a few down in the nets. I prod them back. It’s lovely areas, but I’m struggling to concentrate, because Nicko is in my eyeline with some truly obscene stretches. I can see him bulging; he’s arching his back even harder than Nicki Minaj and it’s somewhat enchanting. Who knew the man would work it like that? Much to think about as Benny heads out for the toss.

13:00

Benny wins the toss. We’re batting. Alex Julienne and Leon Parks head out there. Sitting in the sheds, I notice how every Sheepscombe player, to a man, has a bottle of beer next to them, sitting there like little boozy markers. In doing so they set a good tone. Most of us decide to crack open a beer of their own. I offer Hockings one.

“F*ck off,” he says, shaking his head. “I need food. I need to lie down.”

He heads off to lie down on a bobbly bench, and we don’t hear from him for a while.

Leon gets bowled for 6, ushering in Yanni Baveas. The gorgeous Greek God hits perhaps the shot of the day — a cracking drive through point. Him and Cakey tick the score along nicely, Yanni eventually holing out for 23.

Much like whenever people visit Lord’s, there’s a lot of chat about the slope. Actually, this isn't a slope; it’s a bloody cliff edge. It’s so steep that you can’t even see the far side of the ground. When the ball gets hit down there, everyone has to guess whether it’s gone for four or been gathered by a fielder. And when the latter happens, the ball emerges from seemingly nowhere, rising up through some obscure and mysterious West Country shadow realm. What happens in this bizarre negative space? Is my Dad down there, just out of sight? The ghost of General Pinochet? Some food for Hockings? Nobody can say.

14:00

At drinks, Plough are 116-2. More beers are gathered. Hockings keeps going on about how hungry he is. Benny reminds him that there will be tea in an hour or so, but that doesn’t wash. He slinks off down the hill towards the pub, where he gets roast beef – a psychopathic choice for a dreamily hot July day such as this one.

In the middle, Cake and Duray are going nicely. The former makes a classy 74 (80) and barbeques the latter for 34 (35), our dear South African friend losing his place in the engine room subgroup in the process.

Nieboer heads out there at 7 and, naturally, inevitably, obviously, gets bowled by an inswinger five balls later. I almost smile walking off. This place is my goddamn graveyard. And now I have to walk up this hill, once again, blowing out my arse by the time I reach the top. Why have I done this to myself, three years in a row? Honestly, I’d have better luck scoring runs if I was naked, hogtied, and hanging by my feet from the top of Big Ben. Ridiculous. Painful. Kinda funny.

At 178-6, there’s a slight threat of a collapse, missing out on the par score of 220, but thankfully Nicko has the bit between his teeth. Those long cage-rattling Aussie levers go to work, plundering balls down the ground, the man finishing on 56 (29). Plough end up posting a commanding 236 all out.

15:00

Tea is splendid. Benny’s sister has cracked out some banana bread that’s so good it makes me feel slightly feral. Duray takes a load of grapes — like, way too many — and decides he doesn’t want them anymore, passes them to me, and now I’m stuck with these little green f*ckers. I pass them to Hockings, who passes them along again, but eventually they just find their way back to me, like fruity heat-seeking missiles, so I just eat the damn things.

Meanwhile, Liam Gray has a decidedly stylish pink velvet cap. He’s kind of wading around, growing in stature and confidence as the hangover recedes and his time to bowl approaches.

“Great thing to wear on a hot day,” he nods, pointing to his cap, which must be around 800C by now. It’s got the rare quality of being a darker shade of pink than Liam himself, who, at his most cooked, often reminds me of a Duke's ball.

I try to speak to Benny’s dad about gardening — he’s planted all the flowers around here, and they’re beautiful, brilliantly kept — but we both know I’m out of my depth here. I don’t know the first thing about geraniums, and he can sense it. He’s one of those older, red-faced, slightly grizzled-looking white South Africans who you can tell just doesn’t rate you in the slightest, doesn’t trust you, has absolutely no need for you whatsoever, but is too nice to ever say that to your face.

16:00

Plough head out into the field. Standing there in this lush setting, with these fantastic people, the sun beating down as it is, the whole thing has a vaguely dream-like quality. This isn’t exactly Morden; we’re somewhere very special. And you can tell we’re all aware of this, because the boys are absolutely frothing. We’ve got our beers and Liam Gray has the ball.

“SHEEPSCOMETH THE MAN, SHEEPSCOMETH THE HOUR!” booms Josh Kerr, who is in typically excellent form with his chat, screeching around the field, an absolute ball of brilliantly delivered well-articulated vignettes.

In fact, I’ve never seen my fellow Plough so up and about. Everyone has something to say. It’s without doubt my favourite 40 overs spent in the dirt. Chris Roden-Smith, in particular, is in scintillating form. After delivering his usual spell of brilliance, taking 2-16 off his six overs, he has an excellent shout for Vibes.

“This man’s a Vibesexual; he’s swinging it both ways!” — a shout so good I actually got kind of sad that I didn’t think of it myself.

And it was true. Vibes was making this thing talk. In one over, he could have had their overseas player out four or five times. Cake manages to drop the ball twice in one attempt — a rather impressive failure, on his part. Ahead of his second over, we all do the viking clap as he steams in, and it feels almost primal. At some point, we resort to just making noises at each other, nothing more than phonetics. And now Barbie Girl is blasting out of the speakers, for no good reason at all, cutting through the atmosphere like a pink scythe. It’s wonderful chaos.

To add even more flavour to the affair. Josh Kerr comes on to bowl. Up they go… and down they come, eventually. The batter, who is wearing shorts (“here for a shorts time, not a long time” was my input there), says to Leon: “I really don’t want to get out to this guy.”

“Nobody ever does,” Kerrsy replies. Next ball, he smashes it down Nicko’s throat. Biblical scenes.

“Death comes first for those that fear it the most,” he mumbles gravely in the huddle, which made me think that the only thing to make that wicket better would be Josh Kerr wearing some kind of Barbie-themed executioner’s hood while taking it. Hell, we should have ALL worn that. He takes a similar wicket in the next over, finishing with 2-26 off 2. Never a dull moment when that boy bowls.

At drinks, the score is 112-4 — almost identical to where we were. Benny comes on, and his first two overs are a tad wayward. He sends Dooz into the deep at long on, and me to regulation mid off, which means, due to the bloody Everest-esque incline at this wonderful mysterious ground, that Dooz can’t actually see what’s happening. He asks me to commentate every ball in the style of a 1930s TV announcer, so that he knows what’s going on.

“Cobbett now, up to the wicket… FOUR.”

“And there’s the club captain, Liam Gray, recently returned from a goodwill mission to Ceylon and Indochina!”

[Thinking he’s no longer on air] “Where’s my f*cking dinner?”

“AND HE’S BOWLED. CLEAN BOWLED. AND DON’T THE BOYS LOVE IT!”

Benny politely asks me to put the act away. Next ball, he takes a wicket. Now his dad’s at the crease. It’s a full-length ball. He swats at it. It flies straight into Nieboer’s hands. Benny looks embarrassed, like a player who has just scored at their former club (think Frank Lampard vs Chelsea). I want to give the man an almighty send off — “Yah, you can get that braii going now, eh, China!!” — but he’s a good man and definitely doesn’t deserve it.

Now it’s hat-trick ball. The boys are all under the lid. He darts one through. Bowled. He’s done it. He’s made Plough history, joining an elite group (sorry, Puff). And don’t the boys bloody love it.

He gets absolutely mobbed, all of us clamouring to touch his sweaty bald head. Out of nowhere, we have one wicket to take. And to everyone’s surprise, especially mine, it’s Nieboer who takes it, floating one up there, the overseas bat walking straight past the grenade. Absolutely bamboozled, deceived. It’s unplayable, lads. Un-bloody-playable. The Plough have won. I’m actually a bit sad to be leaving the field. That’s how fun it’s been.

18:00

I head straight for the showers, but I haven’t brought a towel. I ask to share with Nicko, but he tells me to f*ck off, which was upsetting, because I’ve already rubbed deep heat on him and seen him in some very suggestive positions today. When you’ve gone that far, a bit of shared towel action feels pretty elementary.

In the end, I go in without one, just raw dog it. The showers are exceptionally hot. Afterwards, we sit down on the grass with some beers and take in the verdant sun-dappled landscape stretching out before us. Looking at it, I feel good and noble. It’s idyllic, poetic, even inspiring. I feel like I don’t want to be sinful and wicked anymore. Yes… I will come and live here, and never do any more wrong, and lead a blameless, beautiful life, and have silver hair, and bat normally.

Benny and Duray are cranking out a ripsnorter of a braii, and it feels good to stand around them and make unhelpful manly suggestions about what to do with the meat. The end result is phenomenal: pork belly, burgers, boerewors, chicken thighs, greek salad, potato salad (possibly the best one I’ve tried, and I’ve tried a lot of potato salad, let me tell you).

It’s a delightful scene. Liam has a standoff with a dog. He’s eyeing his plate of food, but he hasn’t got the stones to challenge him.

“I’ve had the better of this dog all day,” he says, mouth full of potato salad. Benny could very well say the same about his former club.

20:30

Most of us are staying at a pub called the Old Fleece, but instead we head to the Old Lodge, where Simon Carson is staying. It doesn’t make sense — much more practical to go to where 80% of us will be sleeping — but it also does, in a way. It’s like bees buzzing towards wherever the queen bee lays her eggs. Now you’re imagining what Carson would look like if he was a bee, aren’t you?

It’s also a lovely pub, encircled by a charming golf course. Cows and horses roam around with astonishing levels of confidence. One of them — an excellent white stallion, definitely a Group Zero, good on the gallops — stands right outside the gate, and I want to touch it. Benny is adamant that we shouldn’t touch the horse, which upsets his girlfriend, Sienna, who had plans to pet and maybe even make friends with said white horse.

Instead, we drink plenty of beer, going over the day’s events. Jo Hockings has a coffee, then leaves for the final train from Stroud, presumably to sleep for 76 hours. Laughter fills the balmy night air, and quite frankly there’s nowhere I’d rather be.

22:30

Now at the Old Fleece, we kick on, double down. Somehow a bottle of whiskey emerges. Josh Kerr buys a bottle of red “for his bedtimes”, and it’s a delicious drop — a malbec, for those wine nonces out there. We head up to our rooms, and part of me wants to (even more than usual) open mouth kiss Yanni Baveas. He’s found us some remarkable lodgings.

I’m rooming with Nicko and CRS, and we have two floors — a whole bloody apartment. It’s obscene, what we have here. There’s a tree in the middle of the kitchen that looks like someone’s spread legs, poking through the ceiling, making me think of many things, particularly my wicket earlier. Sprayed pegs. See you bloody later, big boy. God, how good is taking wickets. I can see why Giordy gets so excited about it.

I immediately go for the downstairs airbed, which turns out to be extremely dumb, because CRS then gets a room that would have been fit for Louis XIV. You could have slept the entire touring party in there, and brought guests along, and still had space left over for a medium-sized casino.

The rest of the night is blurry. I remember Yanni singing True Blue at one point. CRS, reclining in an armchair, gives a phenomenal mafioso impression. Kerrsy makes light work of the malbec. I feel like I’m on the verge of shitting myself. It’s time for bed, I reckon.

The morning after

Heinous vibrations on this baking hot morning. I’m grinding my teeth, pouring sweat. I can feel the pounding of blood in my temples — small blue veins gone amok, knuckles whiter than they should be. Terrible waves of paranoia. I hear rustling outside my door, and I’m convinced it’s heavies, hired goons, about to storm the room and beat me in the kidneys, causing me to piss blood for weeks to come.

When you’re feeling this way, and the howling fantods threaten to take over completely, you’d do well to head somewhere like Max’s Cafe — a classic English greasy spoon right next to the station. The perfect place for a fragile ape like me. It’s empty, cool, quiet. Somewhere to rest and regroup, and eat black pudding — or scabs, as Nicko called them. We all get the classic full English, except for Vibes, who plumps for the ‘Mega Breakfast’ — the same as ours with the addition of a beef burger and chips. He destroys the f*cker.

Our group is in a manic sort of mood. The booze and the heat and lack of sleep has made us all half-crazy, by this point. I’m coming out with some truly awful stuff; Yanni can’t handle it, just doubles over, wheezing. I’m afraid of what’s going to come out of my mouth next.

Jesus! Is there a priest in this cafe? I want to confess! I’m a bloody sinner! Venal, mortal, carnal, illegal — however you wanna slice it, Lord, I’m guilty.

At this stage, we should go home. Instead we duck into the Spoons next door, because, well, once you’re this drained and adrift from your moorings, going into that carpeted dungeon somehow feels right. We sit in the smoking area, where one bench has a strong NO SMOKING sign, while another bench, two feet away, has the opposite message: SMOKING OKAY (or whatever).

“Christ,” Yanni says, staring down at his pint. “This is going down like cement.”

I know what he means. What are we doing here? This place, on Monday at 11 in the morning, feels like some kind of purgatory, or one of Dante’s Circles of Hell. Who are these people? These faces? Where do they come from? They look like caricatures of the saddest English person imaginable, all red and hopeless, no life behind the eyes. But they’re real. And, blimey, there are a lot of them — still hunkering down in this sweaty shadow realm, sipping pints and staring grimly at the TV, like they do every day, without fail, that vision of Comfort somehow emerging from the empty morning vibes of a West Country Spoons. Nicko doesn’t understand it.

“That, mate,” I reply, “is the true Britain, right there.”

He nods, agreeing, but I can tell he’s disturbed, doesn’t understand what he’s just seen.

Before he can ask questions, we’re bundled into the Vibesmobile, and off we go. I no longer want to be conscious. As I lean back, tongue out the side of my mouth, I think about how grateful I am to have these boys in my life. Going away like this, you get closer to them, and it occurs to you that these blokes, even without cricket as the binding agent, would still be dynamite friends to have. And, by god, I’m lucky to have them. Nicko summed it up nicely on the way back:

“Everyone is themselves, and they’re completely accepted.”

Amen to that. I jump out of the Vibesmobile and find a Lime bike, and I’m off, screeching down the road, singing to myself, just sick enough to be totally confident, already thinking about my next trip to this idyllic part of the world, where I’ll probably find a way to actually score less than 0.