Penshurst Park CC vs Cricketers Club of London

(Credit: Pete Langman)

In times to come, men will speak of this game in hushed, even reverential tones. They will speak of how the vultures were circling overhead as Ben struggled with his first decision having won the toss (Note Ed: in the interests of prolonging the game). They will tell of the hyena heard cackling in the distance as the Penshurst skipper reported the bad news and the good: we lost the toss, and we're batting. The Cricketers walked out into the merciless heat, kicking over the bones of players who failed to hydrate sufficiently, and it began.

The Pinchen/Brodrick axis soon whirred into action, its relentless hokey-kokey attack of in-out swing tying down the Penshurst openers-cum-Dickensian ne'erdowells Boyden and Lyddon down so tightly that by the fall of the first wicket in the ninth over, just nineteen runs had been scored. Not only that but chances came as thick and fast as a herd of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plain. In Dorset. Simply nothing was quite going to hand. Six inches too high. Six inches too short. A sixteenth from the edge. And as for LBW, apparently the laws of physics are optional on a Sunday. But then Lyddon decided to flash hard and the resulting edge flew to Usman at first slip. Reader, he pouched it.

And lo, the first chance led to a veritable stampede of them. Which we, the Cricketers, dropped with a suavite that would have made Archibald Leach blush. Your correspondent stopped counting at five. Usman managed to hold onto a skier but it became apparent that shivering the timbers was the way to go. So Brodrick did so twice, most tellingly persuading Whatling to play all around one. Which was nice, as he'd hit six fours in the ten balls he'd faced. He plays for Wiltshire. Enough said.

But the innings ground on. And even when we took catches the laws of physics were suspended. As they were later to prove when we came to bat. By tea there were 183 runs on the board. On the plus side Rana had finally taken a wicket after bowling leg breaks that pitched outside leg, spun past both edge and off stump, Odedra produced two perfect off-breaks and Whitlock had taken a wicket with his first ball for the Cricketers. On the minus side, there were 183 runs on the board.

It was the sort of heat that could drive a man to take off his jacket. The sort of heat where even the ball began to lose hope, to lose all semblance of being an orb that bounced. The sort of heat that really isn't cricket.

Sing to me, oh muse, of the valiant Cricketers, and how they fought with their hearts and souls to show their president just how proud they were to wear the (rhetorical) Cricketers' cap. I say sing, oh muse, because my iphone singularly failed to capture a crisp, focused image of our innings. Which is remarkable, as it was an innings I suspect we'd all prefer to forget.

Consider it done.