“Skip, I’ve got to leave at 5.30pm to get back to work.”

“Eh?”

“Yeah, I’ve got to leave at 5.30pm.”

“Right… next time can you put it in the notes please.”

This was the conversation that greeted me as I arrived, as usual, a little late. Luckily, I knew the toss had been pre-arranged Hansie Cronje-style via some late-night messages between Liam and the oppo skipper, and I was aware we were batting.

The knowledge that we’d be playing a good 25–30 overs with 10 fielders didn’t deflate our enthusiasm one iota. Neither did it when we were later reduced to 9, and then 8, but we’ll come to that.

One of my favourite relatively new additions to the Plough over the past couple of years is Pritu Banerjee. He’s handsome, he’s funny, he’s engaging and he’s good at cricket. Kinda like me. So I was delighted to see his name at the top of the order, alongside Tom Merilahat, a man I had yet to meet but already felt I knew from frequently seeing his name and “RUNS” while checking my phone on weekend afternoons.

Usually, this was while at Sofa Play, Chessington World of Adventures, Goals, some kid’s birthday party, or making small talk with other dads, while mentally imagining I was at the DSG scoring imaginary runs, taking imaginary wickets and catches, and sinking imaginary celebratory pints.

The joys of parenthood. It’s great, really. Except when you want to be playing cricket.

This excitement was extinguished slightly in the first over when Tom played round a decent nut. This brought Scants to the crease, who brought stability and ended up coming close to batting the duration of our innings for his Plough career-best score of 40, I believe.

Pritu played some delicious, crunched lofted drives before departing for 30-odd. The middle order all chipped in with useful contributions to support Scants, with Freeway and Narvin particularly enjoying lovely cameos, and Qammar smashing one into a neighbour’s garden.

Throughout it all, Scants was the glue as Plough scored exactly 200 from their 40 overs. A tad under par was my internal assessment on what was a decent wicket and a super-fast outfield.

But we had a gun bowling line-up.

Game was definitely on.

A side note to this: after generously offering to umpire almost immediately after getting out, Tom got a call and had to head home. Thankfully, everything was fine. It did mean, however, that we’d have to field with nine once Qammar had to leave.

Over lunch, Grayzer did some bowling-order shuffling and opened up with Qammar, who we thought miiiiight be able to squeeze in his eight overs before having to leave, and Leo Kelly.

Keeping for the first time in a long time, I can say now, four days on, that my palms are still a little sore from Qammar smashing into them in a lovely opening spell that was genuinely sharp. How he only picked up one wicket, I don’t know.

The real hero of the day, though, belongs to Leo Kelly.

Standing next to me at gully, Liam mentioned how earlier in the season Leo had actually been reluctant to bowl. Seeing him rip through a decent Battersea Badgers batting line-up with six clean bowled was genuinely a joy to watch from behind the wicket.

He bowled immaculate line and length and got the ball to move both in the air and off the pitch. The guy has skills.

Huge congrats on your first five-for. I’m sure there are loads more wickets to come.

Just as Qammar was heading off to work, Bobby Keogh made a great stop in the covers but ended up with a pretty gnarly tear in the webbing between his fingers. Clearly needing a long wait in A&E for a two-minute procedure, off he toodled to St George’s.

This left us down to eight.

Thankfully, after that opening spell from Qammar and Kelly, we were way ahead of the game, and all that was left was for Raza to pick up a lovely little three-for, bowling a beautiful line and length to finish the game off.

I don’t get to play many games these days, but Sunday was a joy and a reminder of why I miss playing so much each weekend.

Decent standard of cricket. An oppo who were a really good bunch — including Mohammad Nabi’s cousin, apparently — and the typical Plough spirit of working for each other and having a laugh, even when we were down to eight men.

Beers were enjoyed afterwards, and Narvin let us know how he’s smashing Duray at chess.

I refrained from mentioning SpyMaster123.

Gotta protect the newbies.

Grant Wolledge AKA Student