Yanni is sat with a scorebook on one side, an iPad on the other, a full jug of beer in front of him, and a pint glass that has already had two swigs taken out of it. He is slightly rabid with excitement as the two captains go out to toss.

“This is literally the perfect day for cricket.”

He then makes a weird slurpy noise with his mouth which is a slightly worrying look into his post-cricket personal life.

This game is being captained by the two Rahuls; Nair the Malayali for the Plough, and Saha the Bengali for Itinerants. As a half-Malayali-half-Bengali boy myself, this match feels in many ways like the custody battle that I wish my parents had had when I was a teenager, and unlike my parent’s marriage, there should at least be one winner today. The two Rahuls walk back from the toss, and we are told that we are batting first.

It is a measured, careful start from Scantlebury and Cosgrove, mainly due to the consistent, accurate bowling from the Itinerants openers. The Hollies pitch that was an absolute minefield in the midweek T20 has seemed to have settled down a fair bit, but there are still balls that are trampolining a little bit off a length, making sure to keep the batsmen honest. It is perhaps because of this bounce that Cosgrove goes back to one that they stays a little lower; the ball hits his bat flush, drops down, and then spins back onto the stumps. It is a desperately unlucky way to get out.

Hisham Khan messaged Rahul earlier in the week, and specifically asked for the number 3 slot. This is a bold move, asking for Ricky Ponting’s batting position; a bold move promising runs on the most inconsistent pitch at the DSG.

Hisham starts out similarly to Cosgrove and Scantlebury, wary of the dangers of extra bounce or low shooters. But at some point, the opposition have to take the openers off, and bring on their other bowlers. And in Itinerants’ case, it is a bevy of spinners. This is, on paper, not a bad decision at all. It has been the driest summer on record in Britain, the pitches have been baked and baked and baked until there is not a single drop of moisture in them, and this is the closest that any of us are going to get to bowling on a Chennai dustbowl. This should be a spinner’s paradise, a rare opportunity on English shores to spin webs around unwitting batsmen.

It would be, if you didn’t bowl big full tosses every over, and Hisham Khan wasn’t playing. It is perhaps a cliche to say that you have to put the bad balls away, but it is nonetheless true. And Hisham is out there to put the bad balls away. He is merciless, and there is a period that he is launching fours over the legside every single over. If they bowl short, he rocks back and slaps them over midwicket, if they are full he semi-sweeps them through cow. He is on 20, then 30 then 40, and before you realise, he is raising the bat.

“Pretty alpha move,” chuckles Nair on the boundary rope, as he takes a drag of his cigarette. He has his bucket hat on, his floral shirt is swaying in the breeze, he has Ben Bohmer playing and is everything that Ben Stokes wanted to be as a captain. He is being talked down from getting another jug.

Scantlebury meanwhile has been quietly surfing along in Hisham’s wake, defending much of what comes his way until he spots the hit-me ball, which he does so obligingly. Looking at Hisham, you might think that Scantlebury has been slow, but he is motoring on quite nicely at a strike rate over 70.

When Hisham eventually gets out for 78 (86), his highest score, he has taken Ploughmans from 12-1 to 152-2. Scantlebury departs not too long after, having scored 44 (62), which is his highest score too, and we are set up very nicely to post a good score.

The rest of the batters go out and with a free licence to swing, and in dribs and drabs, they drag the final team score to 211 in the 35 overs.

The bowling innings begins, and Rahul is, for the first time in this entire game, in his whites. But it is when his first ball, a full toss, is hit for four, that the real change happens. It is like the clicking down of a helmet visor, a noticeable shift in the atmosphere as Rahul very emphatically puts on his game face, and the temperature in a three metre radius of him drops by a few degrees.

He will bowl 5 overs on the trot from here, and he will go for a total of 14 runs. That means that he goes for just 10 runs in the 29 deliveries that he bowls after that first full toss. He is using the entire length of the crease, he is bowling from 22 yards, he is bowling from 25 yards, he is bowling slower ones, quicker ones, back of the hand ones and they cannot get near him. In the middle, he bowls two maidens, and starts putting the leash on the chase very early. He will also get their opener, a batsman who looked aggressive early on, and who was going at almost run a ball before he fell. If he had given himself two more overs, he would have buried the game before it started.

Jimmy Anderson bowls a fun spell from the other side. There is just one process goal in his mind, and that is to see how many overs he can bowl without bowling an extra. He is jinxed by me when I mention that he has bowled two in a row without error, and so it is likely that I owe him a pint for bringing down the curse of the gods on him.

And so, 10 overs into the game, there is a double change in the bowling. And so, this is it, this is the chase, this is the game.

Ajit from one end is metronomic clockwork; it is one field setting with almost no changes, one plan, one suffocating choke meant to crank the RRR higher and higher until something has to give. It is an easy, languid glide into the bowling crease and a super smooth action, a bit Washington Sundar-esque with a high action. Line, length, flight, dip, pressure, pressure, pressure.

Umar from the other side is angry. Angry he has to bowl, angry that he has to wear a shirt. He has a field in mind, but no he doesn’t, and there’s some tinkering here, and then that man has to move back, and wait no, he needs that man in catching.

The thin screaming whistle of pressure builds.

Ajit’s second over goes for 2 runs. One single scoring shot in it. Run rate climbs. And then Umar gets his second over.

It is 2005, Edgbaston, and Shane Warne is redirecting traffic. He is moving three men around the field at once, because he needs the perfect field for Strauss. It is direction and misdirection, it is bread and circus and England cannot see what he is about to do; Strauss cannot see what is about to do. It is theatre of the highest order.

It is 2026, Hollies, and Umar Iqbal is redirecting traffic. He is moving three men around the field at once, because he needs the perfect field for this over. I am two metres away from the bat. Cosgrove has been shifted left, then right, then forwards, then turned in place. There is a short midwicket, there is a second gully. It is direction and misdirection, it is bread and circus and London Itinerants cannot see what Iqbal is about to do. It is theatre of the highest order.

It is 2005, in Birmingham, with the sun setting, when the men around the bat finally settle and Warne tosses it up. He rips the ball so far that it defies belief, and it is an act that everyone who was there that day will remember for a very long time.

It is 2026, in Dulwich, and with the sun beating down, the men finally settle around the bat, and Umar Iqbal bowls a hattrick that everyone who was there that day will remember for a very long time. The game is, for all intents and purposes, done here.

Itinerants captain, Rahul Saha, battles and battles and battles. He blocks, he waits, and when the ball is there, he is incredibly aggressive. He hits fours to all parts of the ground, but it is never quite going to be enough. At the other end, Ajit and Cosgrove combine twice for wickets— desperate swings at deliveries that simply sky in the air to mid off— and by the time Ajit is done with his spell, he has three wickets for just fourteen runs.

In the end, Rob Mead and I finish off the tail, taking the final three between us and wrapping up a 50 run victory. Rahul Saha is left stranded at the other end on 78, a valiant refusal to go gently into the dark. Cosgrove has the ball in his hands, his third catch of the day, and with a vast swathe of Plough cheering on the boundary, it is hard not to echo Yanni’s comments from earlier.

It really is the perfect day for cricket.

Match report from Prithu "Pretty Boy" Banerjee