It’s a vaguely rectangular ground, on the side of a hill, with very small boundaries. You know you’re playing village cricket when the away dressing room has a list of the local rules pinned up on the wall – a six has to clear the pavilion, or the fence on the other sides of the ground; if it hits the tree, it’s at the umpires’ discretion whether it is six or four; if the ball beats the bat and the keeper and goes to the boundary, it only counts as two wides or byes. Yes, that’s how short the boundary is.

After a negotiated toss, Plough were batting first. Smith and Cosgrove opened. The bowlers were slow and accurate and the pitch was sticky after overnight rain, which meant timing the ball was a struggle. The skipper was getting the ball to hoop in, and the other opener was bowling off breaks that weren’t turning very much but were getting a lot of bounce. The two batters settled in and were starting to look a bit more fluent when Cosgrove top edged a pull off the 11 year old leg spinner and was caught by the keeper.

In came Walton, who had asked to play as a batter. He also struggled to time the ball, although did better than most of us as one of only two batters to strike at more than 100. After he was bowled, Baveas came in. His quick wrist speed found the boundary a few times, and a useful partnership developed. Just when it looked like Ean was nailed on for a fifty, Baveas called him for a tight but reasonable-looking single. The Ide Hill keeper decided it wasn’t a reasonable single after all, and scored a direct hit at the bowler’s end. And then not long after ran out Parks in a similar manner.

Although most of us struggled with timing, Ryves hit two booming sixes well over the pavilion (so no doubt at all that they counted as six). Haque hit a four, and Aslam had to come in for the last ball and scrambled a single. We finished our 35 overs with 161/6, which seemed a little under par, but we knew that it wasn’t an easy pitch to bat on, so if we kept it tight we were in with a chance.

But first there was the matter of an outstanding tea. Suddenly, it became clear that the reason the oppo were happy for us to bat first was so we would gorge ourselves on the varied excellent sandwiches and be too full to field. The cakes were also good, and included some miniature rhubarb bakewell tarts with pistachio cream, like something out of Masterchef.

Aslam took the new ball, and first ball of the innings he produced a jaffa to knock over the bewildered opener’s stumps. After that though, unfortunately, he showed that his extra pace meant that anything that was even slightly short sat up nicely to be dispatched over the pavilion.
At the other end, Parks chose to open with Jimmy Anderson, mostly for the bants in informing the opposition who the opening bowlers would be. Anderson bowled well, and was unlucky that a high full toss that ended up hitting the lower third of the stumps was adjudged to have been a beamer. It must have dipped a lot from passing the crease over waist height.

The number 3 bat soon racked up his 50, and had to retire (local rules). In an effort to stem the flow of runs, Yates was brought on, and taking the pace off proved hard to hit. From the other end, Cobbett was even more economical. He started off bowling spin, but after being launched over long on he swapped to seam up. He repeatedly whistled the ball past the outside edge before a slower ball induced a hit down to long off where Ryves took a very good catch and just about managed to not sit back down over the boundary.

Although the runs had slowed up, the rocket start meant that Ide Hill were still in control, so Parks turned to his trump card: Haque. He bowled excellently, kept the runs down, and was unlucky on multiple occasions. It was only late in his spell before he produced the sort of stump-destroying yorker that we had been hoping for.

And so Walton, despite playing as a batter, was whistled up. He struggled for rhythm, so jaffas were interspersed with sixes. It was perhaps his worst ball that got the breakthrough, a wide full toss for which he was already apologising when the batter flung his bat at it. The edge flew like a bullet to the right of Haque at slip, who stuck his hands out and somehow managed to cling on.

But it was too little, too late, and Ide Hill wrapped it up for a five wicket win with seven overs to spare. That did mean an early finish, so we could spend longer in the Cock Inn, which is possibly the platonic ideal of a village pub on the green.

After three consecutive years of Plough victories, it was probably time Ide Hill won one. But we’ll be back next year, and we hope we will remember the secret: pace off, and pitch it up.

Match report from Andrew Cosgrove