The day begins stressfully. My alarm goes off an hour late, giving me exactly 37 minutes to make my train at Waterloo — which is around 30 minutes away, door to door. Some real teeth-grinding stuff to start off this sunny Sunday. I fling myself out of bed and towards Central London like some doomed rat heading up a drainpipe, cursing everyone and everything in my way.

An hour or so later, things are calmer. We’re walking into Byfleet’s ground and it’s a pleasant English spectacle: cute little white clubhouse, with a terrace and various benches; some sort of storage container for the away dressing room; plenty of families and dogs and adults who have that more spaced out, relaxed vibe you get with people who don’t live in London.

One of their players, later dubbed ‘the Byfleet Giordy’, is particularly talkative, coming up to myself and Leon Parks as we stand in the middle and asking us a range of critical questions. Where do we bat? Where’s Dulwich? Wanna be friends? Did we score any runs yesterday? What is the true nature of the relationship between consciousness and matter?

We get onto the subject of the long red train that binds obscure places like these and Waterloo, and how it doesn’t have any toilets. Blyleet Giordy hates this, insists toilets should be mandatory on ALL trains. I tell him about how, in China, some people wear nappies on long-haul trains. Byfleet Giordy absolutely cannot stand this, shakes his head repeatedly, walks off muttering to himself.

Leon chats to the captain for a while. Watching from the sidelines, Matt Bolshaw, who has played many games with Leon, can tell what’s going on.

“He’s buying time,” he says, “because he has no idea what to do.”

That proves to be exactly what Leon is doing. It’s a gorgeous sunny day, but the pitch is indeed quite green. Tricky one to call. Thankfully the decision is out of Leon’s hands: Byfleet win the toss and send Plough into bat, and Leo Nieboer and Jay Patel head out there.

The surface feels okay — some actual carry, at times — but Byfleet have a tall and rather handsome opening bowler who has a man-bun and an annoying propensity for bowling rather impressive left-arm yorkers. The angles are nasty for a right-hander, and it ultimately signals a death knell for both Patel and Harry Bray, reducing Plough to 31-2.

Leon Parks comes in and looks typically organised and calm. With Nieboer, they build a nice little recovery, ticking over singles effortlessly. The pair are bedded in, ready for the long haul, until… Nieboer absolutely barbeques the shit out of his skipper, smashing one at point and automatically calling him through, like some frightened meerkat, and Parks is gone by a mile.

I’ve never seen Parks that angry before. In fact, I’ve never seen him angry ever. Here, though, there’s smoke rising from his head. He’s incandescent. Understandably so: he’s had his Sunday ruined by some dickhead doing something totally avoidable, for no good reason at all. It’s a horribly incongruous sight, like seeing Damon Greeney in an MMA cage fight and actually killing the other bloke — a thing you never ever thought you'd see and hope to god you won’t see again.

And then, as if shooting his side in the foot once wasn’t enough, Nieboer completely rips Ean Smith to shreds with an even more kamikaze single, and now there’s real anger in the camp. I can feel it. With two moments of barbaric self-immolation, the flavour of the contest has changed. I want the ground to open up and swallow me. I want to put a chastity belt on myself and throw the key in the Pacific. It’s horrible, just horrible. I’ve ruined TWO sets of Sundays now. It’s public humiliation at its most acute, with none of the pleasurable bits.

Yanni Baveas and Matt Bolshaw, now wallowing in a tide of negativity, both hole out, and Tom Elmslie comes in with Plough in real trouble at 75-6. Thankfully, Elmo looks sensational from almost ball one, producing some textbook drives and an especially gorgeous flick off his pads for four.

It’s a calm, focused dynamic we have going out there. To keep us rooted — a psychological anchor, if you will — Elmo asks me to give him a sandwich I like after every over. I start with coronation chicken, followed by tuna sweetcorn; we discuss what makes these sandwiches good, and what can ruin them. We discover that we’re very much on the same page vis-a-vis sandwiches, which only strengthens our bond in the middle.

Him and Nieboer add 96, the latter falling for 89, Elmo going on to add some valuable runs with Niraj Thakker and finishing on a wonderful avoidance 49*. Plough record 197-7 — a very defendable total.

The tea is delightful. I’ve never seen so much coronation chicken in one place. They have cornflake clusters — an absolute personal favourite. They have two kinds of pizzas and samosas that aren’t just a disappointing mixture of air and mushy filling; these samosas have a kick. Unless, of course, you’re Yanni, the gora turned Pakistani, who looks at the samosas with the kind of disdain your new girlfriend’s father gives you when you soil yourself at his dinner table and spill wine all over his child. “What is the point of you?” his expression seems to say.

The second innings starts and we have a rather quaint Surrey scene. The light is going from that middle-of-the-day bright intensity to that more late-afternoon golden hue, mixing pleasantly with the soft rustlings of the trees all around and the constant mechanical drone of the M25, just a mile or so away. Plenty of people have gathered: some sit far away, with children and picnics, not really that invested; others are on the benches, watching every ball.

They’re expecting a show. They want action. I do a few suggestive — potentially provocative — stretches, really arching the back, but that doesn’t move them. They need more. Thankfully they have Bolshaw and Thakker to admire; they’re hitting exceptional lines, and it makes mincemeat of their top four, Thakker taking two and Bolshaw taking two as well.

One of Bolshaw’s wickets will go down in Plough history — Yanni with a genuinely perfect reenactment of Alex Carey’s infamous dismissal of Jonny Bairstow at Lord’s. He does it automatically, like a sea mammal finally reentering the ocean, remembering where it truly wants to be, those Australian genes coming through strong. The boys, now on the right side of this horrible and inexcusable act of sporting cowardice, go absolutely mad, and we ask if he’s happy with that, and tell him that’s all he’ll ever be remembered for.

Nigel Stephenson and Niraj Tailor also get involved, and now it’s 60-6. The game almost feels done. Yanni is not convinced.

“This No.7 is gun, mate,” he says to me, his face much closer to mine than it needs to be. “I’m worried about him.”

Yanni is right to worry about their No.7. He’s a South African overseas player named Riley Coutts, which may well be the most quintessential South African overseas player name I’ve ever heard in my short pathetic life, and he’s… rather good. In fact, he’s peerless. It’s staggering, how tidy and powerful he is. He makes sounds off his bat that none of us make. The other 21 players here are just trying to have some fun, do a bit of bang average not-so-serious middling Sunday cricket, and this guy is hitting perfect reverse sweeps for six. He hasn’t exactly read the room; he’s brought an AK-47 to a dildo fight.

And yet… and yet… we give him a chance. He spoons one up high. It’s near Ean and Niraj. Niraj calls. Goes for it. Drops it. Not an easy chance at all, but one we had to take. Nieboer could have possibly got there too. Either way, the chance goes down, and despite the fact that they still need 70 runs and we only need four wickets, the game feels somehow lost already. It’s one of those moments where you can visibly see the life leave the bodies of your teammates, like 11 balloons simultaneously farting out all their precious helium.

In moments like these, the mind drifts. I start to admire the daisies and trees and the electricity towers right above us. I look around and we’re all just standing there, waiting for it to be over. Cricket has killed us. AB De Villiers 2.0 has killed us.

After the game, won with nearly 10 overs to spare, I decide to sit down with AB De Villiers 2.0. His story is similar to others I’ve heard: he’s a Durbanite with a slightly loose aura who came here three years ago and decided he rather liked hitting bombs against Surrey pensioners, and now finds himself in his third year at the club. We speak about Cape Town for a bit, musing about the extremely relaxed DUY laws in that part of the world, and I tell him that I’d love to see him do what he did today at the DSG, against Duray Pretorious on a Hollies mid-July bunsen, see if he can handle it against a real South African.

The Byfleet gang are a nice bunch; they even give Yanni three shots, and one of them proceeds to tell him his entire sexual history. Eventually we leave, Leon very graciously giving myself and Elmo a lift to the station.

On the way there, a police car is blocking the road. An officer tells us someone is having a seizure in there, so they won’t be moving any time soon. We have to walk the rest of the way, and we know we won’t make it in time. Nigel and Yanni are humping it to the station as well, and we decide to grab more booze at the petrol station to drink on the platform while waiting for the next train.

At the counter, the lady asks me: “You have been playing sport today?”

“Yep,” I reply.

“Did you win?”

“Not even slightly.”

“Did you have a good day, though?”

“You know,” I smile, “I got my highest ever score today, and I did have fun, but it feels like I have lost in every possible way today.”

She looks puzzled. “Maybe you should do another sport?”

I laugh harshly, shaking my head. What a ridiculous notion. Maybe rabbits shouldn’t walk in front of cars; maybe men should go to therapy; maybe civilisations shouldn’t do genocides. All very sensible suggestions, but also futile: blood will always be thicker than water.

Waiting for the train, we dissect the game a bit more, but mostly talk about the extremely off-putting hip movements Nieboer does while waiting for the ball. Elmo reckons it would be better suited to some dingy Berlin nightclub; I could wear a gimp mask and nothing else, and sing bad covers of bad songs while prancing around the stage, wiggling all the time, the announcer going: “AH, YES, ALL ZE WAY FROM ENGLAND, YA, YA, ISN’T IT GUT, YAAAAA”

Maybe in another life.

On the train back, the level of discourse drops even further. Nigel moans about how you can’t pee in public as an old person, because it looks way worse than, say, me and Elmo doing it — something I’d never considered before. He gets off at Surbiton, his home stop, but seems extremely confused, as if he’s never been here before. Elmo, Yanni and I agree that we all miss Drew Withers very very much. We convince Yanni that he should get meat, rice AND fried chicken for dinner, all in one big filthy bowl, and go our separate ways.

Quite the day, then. My apologies, once again, to Leon and Ean. If you ever want a beer, or someone to lie under oath for you during an important tax fraud trial, please do drop me a text.