Like always on Club Day, the sun is bursting through; it’s almost as if the universe itself approves of Club Day, actively wants me to drink four tepid beers by 13:00.

It is, as Sean McGurn likes to say, an absolute day for it. The perfect kind of warm — not infernal like Chennai, where the sun’s like some kind of sneaky keyhole view of hell, nor does the sun have that horrible attenuated winter quality of seeming to be behind several panes of glass. No… today, we will have a bask, I reckon.

But unfortunately, and like always on Club Day, Leo Nieboer isn’t doing all too well. And not even because of any chemical handicap inflicted on himself the night before. He’d been having a quiet booze-free night at home when his friend, Kat, had called him at 01:30, asking to stay over, and only arrived at 02:45, so by the time Nieboer sets off from his place in Shadwell, he’s operating on nowhere near enough sleep.

Nonetheless, it’s a joy, an almost Christmas Day-like feeling, doing this pilgrimage to the DSG, but annoyingly there’s a certain jeopardy hovering over this, too, because Nieboer’s got a big bag of picnic snacks for his girlfriend, Livia, and the baguettes are sticking out the top and nearly falling out with every bump in the road. After a particularly vicious bump one baguette does actually leap out and Nieboer has to do some early catching practice.

At the DSG, more and more Plough trickle into the ground every minute, like pigs returning to their favourite trough. Sean is in a very bad way. He’s been to Hootananny twice in two days, and will probably go again tonight, which surely qualifies him for some kind of voucher or gift card. He’s starting blankly into the middle distance, his face pallid, bloodless. He hears that his game — for Aman Jain’s team, No Jain No Gain, against Nicko Dowell’s Nick Knack Paddy Whacks — will be played on grass.

“Well, looks like some blokes are gonna get pumped,” he slurs, getting up slowly and stumbling around a bit. It’s time to play.

Nicko’s side are batting first on the Nursery, while Sandeep’s side take on Umar Iqbal’s Umar Hit-Ball and Run over on the remote pitch. It’s not the strongest performance from Nicko’s boys: only Champion Boss and James Barron reach double figures.

Then again, Aman is taking this whole thing disgracefully seriously. He only uses five bowlers, playing this thing like a proper league game, while Nicko’s whole approach is essentially that of England’s Test side: basically f*ck the notion of winning and just go after every ball, regardless if it’s there or not, drink a lot of beer, and ask questions later (if at all), with the added incentive of focusing less on tactics and more on personal vendettas. So it’s not exactly a level playing field: it’s like the Khmer Rouge having a fight with a bunch of blokes on a stag do, mentality wise.

Aman’s side win, of course — some highlights being Rahul Nair taking four wickets and Sean McGurn overcoming his demons against Chris Roden Smith, scoring some runs off him — five of them, I think it was — for the very first time, following two ducks. Suri Poleboina scores one of the slowest 30s since the 1970s. Harry Wright impresses with the ball; Nicko eminently does not, going for about 25 off his one over, which does, in fairness, mean the game ends sooner and we can return to our beers earlier, so you could say he was actually leading by example there.

Over on the other pitch, Sandeep’s side has won. I have no information on what happened in that game other than Benny Cobbett proudly telling me he swept Sandeep for six and Ajay John proudly telling me that he hit Leo Connolly for six, which is all either of them really wanted to do.

Livia has now arrived, and it’s almost time for tea, so I fashion her a prosciutto and cheese baguette.

“Any butter in there?” Sean inquires, pointing at the sandwich.

Livia shakes her head.

“Lovely,” he says. “A lovely very dry sandwich.” Duray Pretorius hands him a zyn that looks about 100 years old, but at least, Sean points out, it’s still wetter than the sandwich.

Jackie’s tea is the usual affair. Tom Glynne-Jones describes today’s cordial as “tart”. Nieboer gets a few sandwiches and takes them outside. Jess, Matt Spencer’s wife, makes the point that you should do as many things as possible outside, once the weather’s right.

“Absolutely,” Nieboer agrees. “I’ll take calls outside, get lied to outside, fill out forms outside; I’d even shower outside, if society would allow.”

One of Nieboer’s sandwiches contains a kind of mystery meat. Tony Poulter reckons it’s turkey. Livia decides it’s ham. Elena Narozanski thinks it may be spam. We never get a definitive conclusion; whatever it is, it’s nice.

And now for another game, God help us, and more jugs. For the 3rd and 4th place playoff, we’re on the Remote pitch, playing a T12, while the final, a T18, is happening on Nursery.

In the former contest, both teams are determined to treat this game with absolutely no seriousness whatsoever, which explains why Nieboer gets to bowl its first over. Benny hits him for an almighty six. And then Nieboer bowls him the one that doesn’t spin. It hits his pad. It may be going down leg (it’s probably hitting 6th or 7th stump). Nonetheless Nieboer and his teammates screech at Chad Mace, the umpire, like starved hyenas, and the sheer force and intensity of the appeal basically frightens this still-quite-malleable young man into raising his finger, and the boys go absolutely insane. I can see why bowlers bother with this odious task now; that feeling of seeing the dreaded finger and being mobbed is a thrill and a half, let me tell you.

But despite that good start, and a wicket from Harry Wright — caught well by Simon Crane — we are haemorrhaging runs. Nieboer drops Angus Osborne, gets nowhere near it; we drop Leo Connolly about four times; balls just keep disappearing over the boundary.

But it also doesn’t matter, because over on Nursery something seismic is developing. Giordy Diangienda is on a hat-trick. He’s removed Aman Jain and Jay Patel, and now he’s got a hat-trick ball at Ritik Jaat, who is not exactly likely to just block it, so there’s a real chance here.

We all stop our game and wade over to get a closer look. The air crackles with tension; we can’t decide whether we want Giordy to actually do this. Angus reckons Ritik will hit him for six. Nieboer encourages him to get the ramp out. In any case here comes Giordy, steaming in. He bowls a ball on Ritik’s hips. Ritik guides it straight into the hands of Tom Merilaht. For a pulsating second he seems to hold it; Giordy’s arms are up. And then… down it goes, dropping limply to the ground. And down goes Giordy too, writhing around on the pitch like he’s just been shot. The DSG is in disbelief; laughter mixed with pain washes over its green pastures. In Mo Khan’s video of the event, the camera pans over to our pitch, and there’s about 10 sets of hands on heads, all identical, frozen by what’s just happened. Soon we break into applause, an appreciative din, for what was if nothing else a podium Club Day moment.

Umar’s side have seemingly hit way too many runs. Sticking to the memo of not taking this seriously at all, his field is like 18:00 on Day 5 in a County Championship game when a team’s one wicket from victory. Basically everyone is around the bat, full of drunken cocky energy. And it seems to work. Angus gets Michael Ainslie for a duck, third ball, Ainslie hitting the ball onto his foot and then back towards the stumps. He’s delighted; he can start drinking seriously now. Tom Glynne-Jones follows shortly after.

On the sidelines, Nieboer is trying to gauge Livia's perspective on the painfully village proceedings happening in the background. In her mind, when someone says “it’s time to bat” it means they’re about to turn into a bat and fly off into the night. She’s also of the view that Biscoff should change its name to something else.

“Which Plough would you most like to kiss?” she asks me.

“Well, Yanni and I literally kissed, like, an hour ago.”

Yanni overhears. “What a stupid question, Livia.”

He pauses for a moment, then asks her: “Which Plough would you most like to kiss?”

She doesn’t answer.

Nieboer and Nicko do manage to score some runs, but it’s not without some peril. Chad, who was basically only hitting the side netting this time last year, is delivering an excellent over to Nieboer, who’s absolutely terrified of getting out to him, knows he’ll never, ever live it down, lose any vestige of remaining credibility he has as 2nd XI captain, if he does.

With Nieboer and Champion Boss retiring on 25, plus Nicko scoring 20 and Ollie Tennant hitting some good-looking runs too, we have something of a chance. Nicko’s Paddy Whacks need 33 off three overs. Ean Smith comes in and demolishes some Leo Connolly deliveries. Then Umar brings himself on, to “tighten things up”, and James Barron spreads his bowling on a cracker like some bloody canape and absolutely chomps down on it, hitting five of his six balls to the boundary. We’re losing our minds on the sidelines. Suddenly we need 2 runs from the last over.

And suddenly, scoring a run looks impossible. Umar’s Day 5 field is back. Matiullah Shirzad is hitting the mark every time and Ean can’t get him away. He’s run out. Simon Crane can’t hit the ball and gets bowled. Now Champion Boss is in. We need 2 from 1. Champion Boss also can’t hit it. Him and Barron scramble a single. WE’RE GONNA HAVE A SUPER OVER.

Ollie Tennant can’t believe it. He’s back in civilian clothing, wearing jorts now.

“How could this happen?” he keeps saying.

But it is happening, and now somehow we’re back on the field, defending 9. CRS gets us in a juicy position. Leo Connolly needs to hit 4 from 2. The air crackles with a different kind of tension to the tension that hovered over Giordy’s hat-trick ball. There’s no dread, just giddy excitement. Leo smokes one over the rope, absolutely moonballs it into a narcoleptic coma, and Nicko’s boys have come dead last. But I would also argue we had the most fun.

And speaking of fun, it’s finally, mercifully, time for showers. None of us have soap, basically; we all just rinse Rob Mead’s mini Original Source mint bottle. Sean comes in like a dog who’s just been unleashed on a beach walk. Spence comes in with some shampoo and gets us in a corden to see who can catch it; Sean grabs it at first slip. At one point, Aman actually cowers and runs away.

Bad Jake has spent the last hour incinerating a tremendous amount of meat, and now it’s ready. Ollie Tennant packs his away in no time.

“I could have about four of those,” he reckons.

“Four?”

“Okay, maybe not four,” he concedes. “But, you know, a good amount more.”

“I could eat 18 bacon sandwiches,” Nieboer offers rather arrogantly.

Leon Parks is having none of it.

“No chance,” he says.

“Think of all that bread,” Harry Wright adds.

“That’s 36 rashers,” Tennant adds.

“What bread you using? White? Seeded?” Chris Ovens asks.

“Basic bitch white bread.”

Leon Parks winces at this.

“You having butter in there?” Harry Payne asks.

“Of course. And ketchup. Always ketchup.”

“That’s right,” Ollie nods. “Ketchup for bacon; brown sauce for sausages.”

Sean wants more BBQ as well. We can see him lingering around Jackie, looking plaintively at her, but he returns empty handed.

“What happened?” Nieboer asks.

“Well, I went over there and… well, here I am,” he says sadly, refusing to expand.

We’re now into that delightful part of Club Day where the light goes from bright blue to gold and finally to a crimson red, and everyone’s pleasantly inebriated, stood in various groups — laughing, chattering, cheering the arrival of every jug. When you walk out of the clubhouse, there’s all these pockets of Plough, and you can look around and choose which one you'd like to penetrate. It’s like a pick and mix of human cricketers.

Tom Merilaht joins our pocket, and we all shake his hand, insisting that he deserves a pint from us following that dropped catch. He asks if they ever serve chips or rice at the DSG.

“I think they do,” Sean says without certainty.

“No they bloody don’t,” Nieboer shoots back. “Imagine doing rice for this many people, Sean. It would get sticky. It would be WET, SEAN.”

We’re all pretty drunk now, and the chat is getting worse. Lewys Evans, who bowled very nicely earlier, seems to be a bit broken, his eyes unfocused and words painfully slurred. He’s asking if anyone has a spare room. Sean says he does — just not for him. There’s a debate about hostage taking that I probably shouldn’t expand on any further.

Thankfully, it’s time for a bowl off — another Club Day tradition. Champion Boss, with a lit cigarette in his mouth, hits the stumps first time, then stands there, arms out wide, like Jude Bellingham. Nobody else can hit them. Duray’s friend, Jason, who does not play cricket and had about 30 minutes of sleep last night, bowls one so far off the pitch that it hits an unsuspecting Oscar Sawyer in the dick.

Darkness descends completely on the DSG, and so does everyone’s behaviour. The pleasant mellifluous early evening tones give way to a hellbroth of vicious braying nighttime chaos. It’s a bit much; there’s only so much masculinity Nieboer can take in one day. He heads over to Kath, Duray’s fiancee, and their friend, Zoe, for a bit of chat that doesn’t revolve around sport and cocks. We discuss our go-to karaoke numbers — Zoe’s is Murder on the Dancefloor, mine is Not Fair by Lily Allen, and Kath’s is anything by Kylie Minogue, once she’s had enough tequila — and also the remedies for what Kath calls ‘Tayabbs belly’, among other non-cricket things.

Soon Rahul appears with about one million jager shots, and the night, as inevitably as rivers flowing into the sea, veers towards Hootannany, Sean’s second home, where absolutely nothing good happens, as far as I’m concerned.

Time to call it there. It’s been the most gorgeous day — one that seems to fill your lungs with cleaner air and makes you feel like the world is good and noble, that things may actually be okay. There really is no place on earth I’d rather be.

And it’s all ahead of us — the failures, the jugs, the dreamy golden evenings, the endless conversations about stats, and… yes, those doomed trips to Hootananny. I cannot bloody wait.