Over the years the Authors XI have found many ways to lose, but for the first time on Sunday they managed to surrender a game purely through the negative superpower of abysmal fielding.

A number of the Authors had spent the previous night at Alex Preston’s Rectory, where each received a pie, inscribed in pastry writing with his (or her) own name. This felt like a particularly delicious form of auto-cannibalism, as if each Author were devouring a slice of his (or her) own buttock. Perhaps the magnificent hospitality had something to do with the next day’s awful fielding performance.

The day began in a fine mizzle, about the consistency of urine sprayed back from a badly designed pub urinal. The pitch, nestled among the attractive gardens (not that any of us bothered to look) of Belmont House, was an unnatural, luminous green, as though enriched with E numbers. Imagine a bottle of Night Nurse held up to the light.

‘Could be interesting,’ was the considered view of the senior pros. ‘Stick ‘em in.’

Charlie Campbell and Ian Marshall opened the bowling for the Authors. They bowled tidily, but lacked venom. For once this was a pitch that craved a shorter length. When pitched up the ball came nicely on to the bat; but the effort ball, from short of a good length, spat like a cobra. It was also clear that Tozer and Rana, opening for CCL, liked it full and straight, and soon the boundaries at long on and long off were peppered.

The change bowlers, Hogg and Holland, didn’t do much to slow the scoring, and soon the openers had racked-up ninety odd. They did, however generate chances, particularly Hogg, who had no luck at all. Five went begging, in a flurry of fluffed stumpings and floored catches. The worst was by McGowan at deep midwicket. It was the sort of dolly you’d use to help 12-year-olds build their confidence. We’ve all seen the film of a mother killer whale maim and bludgeon a sea lion pup, and then pass it on to her calf to finish off. Well this was that sort of catch. Perhaps McGowan would have snaffled it if the ball had arrived in a pie crust with his name on it.

And so it was left to Holland to make the breakthrough. He stepped up his pace and, in one of his finest spells for the Authors, castled Tozer for 44, and then ripped through the defences of the dangerous Bennett for 13. The testosterone dripped from him like fat from a spit-roast boar.

But more catches went down, and heads followed. It took a huge injection of energy and aggression from Thacker to pull things round. His figures of 3-33 hardly did his spell justice. He bowled his legspin with real zip and zing. Campbell came back at the end with a tight spell. At one point the Authors were looking at 200+, so a final total of 171 represented something of a triumph, especially given how poorly supported the bowlers were by the fielders.

McGowan’s poor match continued, when he wafted at a floater like an eighteenth-century fop flapping his handkerchief at a bad smell. However Beard, batting with finely controlled aggression, and Zaltzman, his timing as perfect as a Buddy Rich solo, kept the Authors in the race. But both perished, and a collapse followed, triggered not by poor batting, but excellent bowling. Left-armer Bennett bowled Preston and Hotten in the course of one near perfect over, and Hogg received that rarest of phenomenons at this level – the genuinely unplayable delivery, pitching outside leg and hitting the top of off. Thacker bristled, and punched the shot of the day off the back foot through extra cover but when he fell it was all up for the Authors.

Ultimately, it was a day in which the Authors’ good bowling and decent batting were let down by fielding that simply wasn’t fit for purpose. AMc

Player impact ratings

Beard 8; McGowan 0; Zaltzman 7; Preston 3; Hotten 3; Thacker 7; Hogg 6; Campbell 6; Trenowden 4; Marshall 6; Holland 8