The whole week up to this point has been stunning; it’s one of those sweltering, cloudless-sky weeks that would prompt a cheap tabloid to post a headline comparing London to Kingston, Jamaica and proclaim that we have it better. It’s been pints weather, wedding weather, joy weather.

But today, is of course, my first Sunday game of cricket, and because life is just a metaphor for cricket, it is cold, it is grey, the energy has gone, and a general sense of malaise has crept into my bones. The sun has completely disappeared, replaced instead by a vicious wind that makes it seem about 15 degrees colder than it actually is.

Lance Armstrong’s heart was said to be a third bigger than the normal human’s, one of the reasons— alongside copious doping— that he had the superhuman fitness and aerobic output that he did. At the boundary to today’s game, there are similar conversations about Michael Ainslie’s liver; it seems to be the only way that anyone can fathom how the man could put away ten (to fifteen by some accounts) pints the night before, and still be here, upright, not slurring, ready for a game.

The awe that we have for him evaporates a little when he looks around the boundary, before a single ball has been bowled, looks at his hands and asks “So, who’s the backup keeper for today.”

We chuckle, maybe think nothing of it, but it is not Ainslie who should have been worried about a backup. It is practically everyone else.
Their batting innings gets off to a textbook start. Their openers know Azhar and Callum, and they know their job is to just get through it. They actively choose not to put bat on ball for the entirety of Azhar’s first two overs; a constant reminder that there are two kinds of leaves, and somehow, they are picking the right kind every time. Callum starts wayward, but then in his second over, there’s just a little bit more pace, a little bit more bounce, and Peak is sent back to the sheds.

That is the last bit of joy we will have for about 28 overs.

Will comes in, some guy I don’t know, but he seems nice (a worrying sign in cricket), Max mentions him as the big fish (more worrying), and Duray wonders, quietly, fielding at gully, whether he has a better cover drive than Butlin (terrifying).

There is little to report for the next hour or so. It is just immensely sensible, risk-free, punishing batting. Every good ball that Max or Duray bowls is met with respect and the full face of the bat. Any ball that is too short or too full is punished. Will gets to 20, then 30, then 50, raises the bat, then 60, then 70, and it just feels like it will never end.

The batting is boring, but the fielding is not. Joe Hocking goes down to field one at cover and the ball hits him so hard on the knee that there’s an echo in the trees on one side of the boundary. He is almost immediately crippled, and struggles to move even a few steps. This would maybe be fine, if he weren’t hit on that knee, by my count four more times, by Ainslie’s count, seventeen more times.

Callum, who has been steaming in for his spell, is given a clear and concise reminder why triple headering a week is bad news, when his quads shut down entirely when he runs to stop a tight two, and render him close to immobile. Someone at the tea break will look over to him and say: you’ve got an unbelievably good looking body, it just doesn’t work very well. Callum, nursing his quads while simultaneously trying to score, will nod sadly and agree.

As the temperature drops, and the wind chill increases, fingers are hit, Duray gets what I’m told is yet another three ball contact this week (his dive in the gully region stops a certain boundary, but you wonder at what cost to his future progeny), and everyone’s knees are in danger. But, it is a testament to the side that heads don’t drop, and the bowlers keep wheeling in, refusing to let the standards slip. Niraj bowls really nice flight, mixes it up with the odd seam up, and what was possibly meant to be a two over burst stretches out to more, as he continues to put pressure on the bat. Tom Glynne-Jones bowls a remarkable spell of 8 overs flat out, changing his pace, his line, his flight. He is desperately unlucky to walk away without a wicket; on another day, that spell rips through most batting lineups.

Max, who has been electric in the field here cements his name in the Plough history books when he is involved in his 100th fielding wicket in just his 101st game. Southbank attempt a two, there are huge calls for the bowler's end, but the throw is a little bit wayward, a little too far to Max’s right, and for another player, maybe just too far to capitalise on Southbank’s running. Max is not other players. He takes one and a half steps, wraps one trailing hand around the ball, spins and throws in one movement, with one stump to aim at. It’s Max. Of course it’s out. There’s a reason he’s reached this milestone, and I quote, something like 150 to 200 games quicker than the next person.

JT, their opening bat, is involved in one of the most extraordinary passages of play I’ve ever seen in Sunday cricket. An appeal goes up for an LBW, which is given after a brief consideration, and there are cheers from our side. JT walks down to the other end, says that he definitely hit it, and then simply stands there.

“I’m not out.”

The umpire who has given the decision says fuck this, and walks off. JT ends up making 50. I didn’t realise I was allowed to do that. I’m officially letting all my future captains know, via this match report, that this is now on the cards from me.

Southbank finish on a neat 260 in their 40. It’s a tall task to chase this down. Hockings can barely move. Duray is so cold that he’s wrapped himself in a full blanket, and from the back, looks like the little Yoda thing from the Mandalorian. John Ryves, who I also think has had his knees smashed in on the field, is remarkably chipper. He seems excited.

Hockings and Ainslie go in to open.

It is a textbook display of opening batting; high elbows, head above the ball, clear front foot movement. We are going at a shade under 3 an over, but this is what we need right now. A platform, some kind of base for a launch later on.

Maybe it’s the captaincy, maybe it’s the Plough badge, maybe it’s the giant 420 that he has on his kit, but Hockings is a man transformed. I have only ever seen him in nets, where his main aim has always seemed to be to break the world record for fastest bat speed recorded, every single ball he faces. Out here though, he is immaculate. He does not look close to getting out. And the knees that were in tatters have been pushed to the back of the mind, because every single time there is the option to do so, they’re turning easy singles into well run twos. The run rate creeps up, and is now at 3.5. A platform, as Max wanted, is being built.

Ainslie is bowled for a well crafted, hard worked 37, and I go in.

There is almost nothing to report from my innings, but in a game that brings me nothing but the deepest frustration, and unending misery, it was nice to have one small sliver of light. That was in the second over I faced, where in the second of three consecutive fours, I hit a ball so hard that it hit their youngest fielder flush in the head, bounced off, and travelled another 25 yards to the boundary. It neatly summed up two things I enjoy in life, which is inflicting pain on children, and scoring boundaries.

When Max comes in, the asking rate is still climbing. He doesn’t seem bothered. From almost ball one, the running is dialled up, but now with some weird encylopaedic knowledge of the opposition.

“That’s John at deep square, there’s definitely two there.”

“Look for the overthrow on this guy, he’s got a shit arm.”

“Warrier ate a lasagna two days ago, and his system is poor at processing dairy, plus it’s gone to his left hand, so let’s turn that two into three.”

Hockings makes his 50, and it’s a captain’s knock. He is still running and the game is still on. He then absolutely smokes one, which Brims, a guy with a fascinating hairline, seems to almost magically pluck out of the sky, with minimal interest.

Duray walks in having faced an angry 80mph Pakistani bowler the day before, and a left arm spinner who ran through the rest of the lineup, and he beat the piss out of them for more than a hundred runs. He is so dismissive of the bowlers here today that he gives himself precisely two dots before deciding to not score a dot again.

4, 2, 1, 2, 6.

The next ball is a full toss that he hits disgustingly hard, albeit to one of the only fielders on the leg side. I will be trying to replay the exact height at which it would have passed him by standing at the crease, for the rest of my week.

Southbank are about it now, and they truly believe that the game is done.

What follows really does beggar belief. In the fading light, with the temperatures now so low that people are trying to wear other humans as outerwear, against a run rate that is surely too high, Max Gumpert goes absolutely ballistic. Every single ball, there’s the big, idiosyncratic crab walk across the stumps before smearing deliveries across the leg side. Nothing from back square to long on is safe. No bowler is safe. No gap is safe.

And when he can’t hit the boundary, he is sprinting twos and threes. Not cricket running, no, this is track sprinting. Relentless aerobic output.

This is Lance Armstrong, except if Lance Armstrong had some kind of sledge for every stage of the Tour de France he completed.

“He’s so slow, there’s two there.”

“They’re going to throw overthrows, be ready, yes, yes, yes.”

“Run two, you marathon-running cunt.”

The last is a direct quote to Ollie Tenant, who, credit where credit is due, showed us all why he’s the master of 42km. He has been exemplary all day in the field, covering ground over and over again, and he is the same here when corralled by a batsman who is now so zoned in that he does not raise the bat for a 50, but just keeps running.

Even when Callum comes in, Max does not relent. He will drag this club to a win, or someone else will die trying. Callum is told to run twos on his depleted quads, and he just does.

44 required off the last two.

Max swings, and swings and sprints. 17 taken. 27 required.

At some point in all the carnage, the helmet comes off and the bat is raised. This is a ridiculous innings, and has kept us in a game that we had no right to be in.

In the end, it is too much. Sometimes, it just is. Not even the man with the most centuries for the club can do it this time. Plough finish on 245, Southbank finish with their hearts in their mouths, and the game is done.

Coming into this weekend, both Max Gumpert and Duray Pertorius were lining up for big personal milestones for the club. On Saturday and Sunday, these two leviathans of the club mauled their opposition — emphatically, brutally and clinically establishing exactly why they’ve managed appearances 100 and 150 for the Plough. If you’re the rest of the league, I would be very worried for the next 150.