Ploughman CC arrive at the ground, somewhere near Coulsdon South, with the skies above a flat, matte, sinister grey that does not look like budging whatsoever. The temperature has dropped, and it is practically arctic outside. The opposition are in multiple jumpers, pullovers and in one case, what looks like a Kevlar jacket. Benny, captaining this game with just ten men, wins the toss, does the right thing and bats first.
The worry about getting this match done in time is so high that the next bat down is asked to be square leg, and so it is that I walk out fully padded, to station myself at square leg like some kind of cricketing version of John Terry being a full kit wanker.

Leo gives himself exactly two full deliveries to get an idea of the pitch, and the bowler, before piecing him up with four consecutive boundaries. At the other end— which is technically the same end, as we are doing ten straight overs from one side— Benny Long-Handle, possibly prepping for his stag later on this year, takes this as a prime opportunity to practice his golf swing. The first six that he hits seems to vaguely defy physics, looking like it accelerates for longer than Newton would suggest is possible off the bat.

The two openers feast on the openers, and it really doesn’t feel like there is any part of the ground that is safe from them. Benny is finding gaps with ease, while Leo Towers sort of just carries on with his relaxed butchery of whatever it is that they throw at him. They rack up the team 50 before anyone realises, and it seems like they might both red ink this by how easy they are making it look.

Benny goes for one big shot too many and is bowled for a very strong 23 off about 18, and I come in at 3, my position at square leg cutting down the time to get to the middle by at least twenty to thirty seconds.

It is immediately clear that our openers have either a) made the pitch look far easier than it actually is, or b) I have never actually hit a single ball in my life before. While Leo is at the other end, making everything look like a casual throw down, I cannot time anything. It is difficult, without being there to really paint the picture of how bad my timing is, but let’s just say that if I was Lee Harvey Oswald, the grassy knoll was the literal passenger seat of the 1961 Lincoln Convertible, and scoring a boundary was JFK’s head, that the president would still have made it out of that drive alive and well, ready for another healthy round of cheating on Jackie Kennedy.

When Leo is out caught on 42, trying to send one into the outer orbit of Mars, I make a decision to try and leave hitting boundaries to people with a working hand-eye coordination, and instead score runs entirely through running. I am therefore incredibly lucky that the next man in is Bobby Woodcock. He is the absolute dream of a batting partner; he is rapid, he turns on a dime, he knows exactly when to call for a two, he knows how to delay the run from the danger end to maximise the chances of the run being completed. Outside of this, from even the first two drives he hits, it is abundantly clear that he knows how to bat. The technique is textbook; bat tight in line with the front bad, a Sangakkara-esque bend in the front knee.

The next few overs consist of relentless running that start to really get on the nerves of the Superkings. No matter where the ball goes, we are running twos, and they start to make silly fumbles and slips in their basic fielding. Just when Bobby thinks of taking off and really releasing the handbrakes, he is out caught.

I head out to greet Callum, and explain that the pitch is both spongy and tacky; it is holding up and leaching a lot of pace off the ball, but at the same time, there’s a sort of trampoline bounce that means that the ball is popping up really horribly, and that’s something to watch out for. One bowler is swinging it in, while the other is holding his line, but the back of a length means it can sometimes be hard to get away.
Callum nods serenely and hits his first ball for a boundary.

Callum is, as Benny and Leo were, playing on a different pitch to me. He hits an inside out sliced six over cover-point that is so outrageous that it starts to feel like his entire role out here is to just quietly, but forcefully, show me how to bat. He finished 21* (11), with his only regret seemingly that he wasn’t quite able to crack a 200SR.

Max Wright, who took a 24 hour flight just to play this game (not strictly true, but it makes for better writing) leans on a cover drive on his first ball, and if this were being officially recorded, swiftly enters his name into the Engine Room groupchat.

Benny Cobbett, a man who lives and breathes cricket strategy, grins with glee as he tosses the ball to Cash to open the bowling. Is there anything more delicious, more renegade, more modern T20 than getting your offie on in the powerplay overs?

And boy does he get a return on the Cash investment. The fourth ball is X-rated filth; it hangs above the eyeline for an age, and everyone on the pitch already knows what is going to happen. The batsmen starts to get into position to hit the biggest sweep he has maybe ever hit in his life, and then the ball drops like it’s being dragged down by an invisible hand, and suddenly the batsman is nowhere near where he should be, and the ball, with its new, pronounced seam, grips and bites and spits and the bails are off.

This is the kind of ball that you maybe bowl once in a match. Sometimes you don’t even get to bowl it once.

Cashy does it again, the very next over. It is fearless bowling to keep looping it up there when you know that all they want to do is send you into the hedges, and so these are two exceptionally well deserved wickets.

He is so good that he bowls his four overs out on the trot, picking up yet another one in his final over with the opposite of what came before. Having been hit a bit, he fires one in that the batsman can only hit straight up in the air. Cashy ends with figures of 3- 35 off 4, which you would take most days of the week.

It is a day where nobody bowls badly. Narvin is, as usual, rubber-band whippy. When he bowls full, he is close to unplayable, and is often just a shade too quick for some of them. Greg eases into his spell, and the longer it goes on, the more tantalising the drop he gets on the ball is. These are good signs this early on in the season, and there is a huge amount to be excited for, going ahead.

But now, with the light fading alarmingly, the catches start being put down. Their opener, who has showcased glimpses of what he can do, is put down three times. And then he turns it on. There is very little trigger movement, very little energy wasted at the crease, and then a thunderous slap of the ball the moment it is in his arc. He hits two shots over square leg that are so big that they are lost for the rest of the game, and he looks like he wants to keep on going.

It is real credit to both Bobby and Benny that he does not just go on to score a 20 ball 50; they both realise that he likes pace and so they just start hanging it out there, slower and slower and slower, with more and more tease. It messes with his timing, and just about keeps us in the game.

When he retires out for 50, the light is now a farce.

John Walton comes on for a second spell, and it is now a lottery as to who can and can’t see the ball. It might explain why, when he pins their batsmen in front of middle and leg, with the ball heading towards roughly the middle of the stumps, the umpire turns down the appeal. Walton is teetering on the edge of an apoplectic meltdown, but decides that the Champions League semi-final is on later, and he would quite like to watch it in their bar without being barred for murdering one of their umps. Instead, he takes a deep breath, walks back, bowls a few more deliveries, and then takes a wicket.

In the end, as was the case with Bayern Munich, it was slightly too late, not quite enough, and left ruing a performance that could have been just a shade better in the first half of the game. While there is, much like Harry Kane’s empty, glassy eyes at the end of the game, an abject desire from myself to just give it up and reconsider a new career, there are positive to take away. There are, like Michael Olise in the first leg, exciting, brave, talented new players to watch out for with great interest. There is, like Vincent Company’s tactical growth, a slick and cunning captain in Benny, possibly itching to take the reins later on in the season.

The season is young, and we are just getting started.

Match report from Prithu Banerjee