It’s been a busy week of weather watching and the doubts of us actually getting a full game in never had the opportunity to go away. Ripley isn’t around the corner and the last thing anyone wants to do with a sore head on a Sunday is trek all the way there, just to go straight home. But with rain still forecasted all afternoon we had to take the punt.

First of all for myself it was NOT a good start to the day at all. After stupidly deciding to stay up to watch the boxing at silly o clock leaving just a few hours to sleep, my 10am alarm ended up getting blocked out with poor Sandeep leaving me a lot of missed calls, wondering if I was either dead or kidnapped. Apologies for this one Sandeep!

Eventually I found my way to him and we were on the move, with new road diversions popping up on his SatNav every 5 minutes.

With a 12.30 start time pre-agreed and just a handful of our team there 10 minutes prior to this, Damon Greeney has to step in on tossing duties whilst CRS was still a couple of minutes away. It really didn’t need to be asked what CRS wanted to do had we won but you know, Damon Greeney is one of the most polite blokes to walk the earth so he still asked anyway. A couple of minutes later Yanni updates the WhatsApp group. “Bowling first.” Bollocks.

The rest of us arrive and run to change and take the field, with a pretty useful pack of seam bowling options at our disposal on an absolute mudbath of a pitch that hadn’t been covered. Barron can’t work out how a club like this don’t have covers… until a second later when we turn around see a load of covers just sat outside of the boundary.

So now the even bigger question is why on earth have they not been used??? Turned out that apparently the wheels are all busted on them. Very convenient. A shortened 25 over game is agreed by both teams with the optimistic view that this was slightly more achievable in these conditions.

So we kick things off with an opening bowling partnership of CRS and Damon. Nothing special then just the two leading wicket takers at the club this year with a combined 60+ wickets and probably about 450 maidens between them.

I’ve dropped a few high catches recently and I’m feeling far from fresh. CRS asks me to go at slip and I think you know what, I’ll definitely have a look at that. If it comes to me and I don’t have time to think about it then I hopefully won’t cock it up. CRS runs in and puts it on his usual spot where the opening bat just lightly fishes his bat out at it. The ball comes straight to me and I completely shock myself to react and get my fingers under it safely. Ripley are 0-1 from 1 ball.

CRS continues to bowl an opening spell of his usual consistent and unplayable stuff, then you have Raymond Beanie at the other end who is still absolutely pumped from taking a five-for on the hollies yesterday. He removes their more dangerous looking opener who makes the very foolish mistake that 17 different batsmen of the Surrey league have done in picking out James Barron in the field. Then Damo takes no prisoners as he proceeds to clean bowl the new man with his very next delivery.

So what you’re saying is Damon Greeney is on a hat trick, for the second time this weekend??? This man’s form needs to be studied.

Unfortunately the hat trick wasn’t to be again, however he does go on to get a third wicket in his next over, nicked off for an easy Baveas catch. That’s 8 Greeney wickets just this weekend btw.

Myself and NCC (No Chat Chad) are the first change bowlers, where bowling just one ball makes me question how on earth those two were bowling so comfortably on this slippy ground. Chad is bowling beautifully, just putting it on the spot every delivery, racking up dots, whilst mine is a bit of a mixed bag.

We both finish our spells with one wicket a piece, catches taken by Damo and Yanni.

But the next bowling change is where it really gets interesting. Last Sundays game against Putney saw people like Sean McGurn and Ben Gumpert bowling lengthy spells, this week it is none other than… YANNI BAVEAS. The scorers don’t even ask for his name they just put him in the book as “wicketkeeper”.

Everyone is beyond excited to see this one. He quickly gives the gloves and pads to Sandeep, and then stands at his mark ready to bowl. Has anyone even seen this bloke bowl in the nets before? I’ve only ever seen him use a sidearm personally. All I’ll say on his action is for those of you questioning if Bumrah chucks it, then take a look at this guy, his bowling arm is about as straight as a roundabout.

Nevertheless he actually finishes with pretty respectable figures, conceding 15 runs from his 3 overs.

Qammar comes on at the other end to bowl at a 13 year old kid, and thankfully for everyone involved he bowls some leggies at him. The strike the rotates and the kids partner who looks like he can bat, gets his off stump taken out of the ground when Qammar ramps up his express pace. He’s done this wearing the flattest pair of trainers with zero grip, and I have no idea how.

Barron then also bowls some spin at the kid, and unsurprisingly looks good doing it, then Niraj and Sean bowl a few tidy overs to close out the 25. Ripley finish their innings on 118-7.

One last thing to add on this innings is that this is the only weekend game I’ve played in this season where the free hit rule has been played, and for some reason we decided to make the most of that and give them about 10 free hits in 25 overs. Yanni actually bowled his best balls on free hits so we’ve concluded that he’s a free hit specialist bowler now.

Looking for a quick turnaround to beat the rain, we were told by Ripley that tea was ready upstairs and we couldn’t delay this until after our innings. CRS tells us the batting order and we head upstairs to a nice looking spread.

A few minutes later, in walks Ean Smith, fully padded up to eat his tea. Unbelievable scenes. If we still did the “loves to bat” award that we used to do on the podcast then this man has won it already before even walking out to the crease.

Barron is our other opener and we get things underway, with rain constantly starting and stopping every few minutes.

Our innings starts off somewhat… conservative… Ean is taking a while to get off the mark whilst Barron is mostly playing nice shots to fielders for singles, or hitting big shots that should be six on most grounds, but hitting them to the longest boundaries where it just stops dead once it hits the ground and doesn’t even get 4.

The pair of them start to pick things up and find the ropes a few times, before Ean is stumped on 14(51).

A few balls later Barron hits a huge shot with what looks like a big six straight over cow, until it’s going over the guys head and he just sticks one hand up and catches it behind his head to dismiss him on 29(19). Absolutely unbelievable. CRS is sat next to me pissing himself. “BARRON HAS JUST BEEN BARRON’D! THIS IS WHAT HE DOES TO PEOPLE EVERY SATURDAY!”

Yanni and Sandeep are the new men at the crease and they both look very comfortable there in the rain. Yanni is respecting the good balls whilst putting away the bad ones, and then anyone who’s seen Sandeep bat can work out how he went about his business.

The boundaries start coming thicker and faster, and then with 20 runs to play with the Ripley skipper decides to turn his arm over.

Unfortunately for him, Sandeep wants to get home and enjoy his Sunday evening, so he punishes him with 5 consecutive boundaries to finish the match off in that over. Sandeep finishes on 42* (23) with Yanni on 21* (21).

And just like that, that’s the end of the 2025 season at Ploughmans Cricket Club. It would be wrong not to finish that off with a cold lager beer or two so we do just that.

The Ripley lads are showing us their impressive memorabilia that decorates the bar area, including a framed England jumper from Ashley Giles, who used to play for Ripley back in the day. One of the blokes that was watching tells us that he is actually Ashley’s uncle. Then Damo responds by saying he’s meeting with Ashley tomorrow.

Thanks to all for another fantastic season and I look forward to seeing you all at the awards night.

Last of all I’d like to thank Mr Stephen Britto for coming. On a day where we used 9 bowlers including the keeper, with Britto personally sitting just 2 runs away from 13,000 runs for the club, he was more than happy to reject several offers to bat in the top 4 and instead finish his final game of the season with a TFC.

Match report by Callum Daley.