As is traditional, the last away game of the season was at Addington 1743. Despite being in Croydon and on the tram network, it really feels like a little Surrey village with its 11th Century church, the old forge building, and the tree-lined, sloping cricket ground.

It was a game of milestones. Before the game, there was some confusion about whether it was Azharul’s 99th or 100th game, due to a mix-up about whether a previous game had been conceded or abandoned. Afterwards, it turned out to be his 100th. Also, we found out after that it was Britto’s 550th. Ean went into the game needing 22 for his 1000 runs for the club.

As we were getting ready to start, the threatened rain came in and so we started half an hour late in a game reduced to 35 overs a side.

As is traditional, the pitch was low and slow. Britto and Hanzi (in a rare outing for the club this year) struggled with timing, as did nearly everyone else who followed. Britto played too early and lobbed a catch up to square leg. Hazi played way too early and was bowled. Ean came and went, still needing another 20 for his 1000 runs, at which stage we were 10/4 after 13. Umar hit the first four of the innings in the 14th over. Umar looked good until chasing a wide one and edging behind. At this point, Max Gumpert came in and did what he has done so often in the past and took the game by the scruff of the neck. He bludgeoned 59 off 40 balls, a strike rate more than twice that of the next fastest-scoring batter, before falling to an excellent catch at long on. Azharul hit some shots, but the first one he really timed went straight to the fielder at cow corner. Some scampered running by Tailor and Gordon-Walker took us up to 128/9, aided by the oppo wicket keeper butchering a couple of fairly straightforward run outs.

That was a lot higher total that it had looked like we were going to get, largely down to Max’s efforts. Unfortunately, the downside of that was that he had tweaked his back again and wasn’t sure he was going to be able to field.

After an excellent tea, featuring some proper chunky cheese and pickle sandwiches and a very tasty spicy pasta dish, we were back out. Given the state of the pitch, we thought batting wouldn’t be easy and we would be in with a shout. We opened with Azha and Raza, because why wouldn’t you? We knew we needed to take early wickets, and in the second over, Raza got one to jag off the surface and hit leg stump.

Unfortunately, that was our last success in a while, as the oppo, who presumably are used to the pitch, demonstrated a range of clean and (mostly) straight hitting. There was a lot of swinging and missing, but unfortunately we weren’t able to get the edge or sneak a ball on to the stumps.

At one stage, the opener hit the ball into the trees at the end of the ground. Given the height and speed of the ball, there was only a limited range it could have gone, but a bunch of us spent several minutes failing to find it. When I played here two years ago, a ball change worked out well for us when we swapped a ball that wasn’t doing anything for one that Azha managed to get to go round corners, and he ran through them to win the game. This time, the ball change definitely didn’t help. We were struggling to take wickets with the new ball, so it was even harder with the battered one we were offered instead.

Tailor came on and was hit for three consecutive straight boundaries. He held his nerve and took the pace off the next one and gave it a lot of flight. The opener tried to launch it into Kent but only managed to pick out long off. Two balls later the number 3 inside-edged onto his stumps. If that was the breakthrough we thought we needed, the number 4 disabused us of that idea, with 29* off 16, ably supported by the number 5 with 9* off 23, finishing the game off in 19 overs.

With a few more runs and one or two more early wickets it might have turned into an interesting finish, but in the end it was a pretty humbling loss. The only thing to do was to head for the Cricketer’s Inn and pick over the game and the bones of the season. When we left the pub, it was dark and affine, persistent drizzle was falling. It felt like autumn and very much the start of the off season.

Match report from Andrew Cosgrove