HHCC vs Bank of England

Oh dear. A 24-hour binge beginning at Lord's at 11am on Saturday, continuing with dinner with one's alcoholic uncle, thence to a Bethnal Green house party and back home for breakfast lagers, is perhaps not the ideal preparation for a cricket match. Two quick pints at the Plough seemed to perk me up somewhat, but not for long.

I snooze; Nick mows

The opposition were Bank of England, and with the absence of Dom (on holiday I think) and Henry (being unspeakably lame) I was asked to open the batting. Fortunately some heavy rain meant the game was reduced to 30 overs per side, and I got time for a quick pre-match snooze. It didn't help. I was dropped twice on my way to a painful 6, before being stumped having a mow.

I'm out; there's a fly-by to celebrate

Unsure quite how to bat (not quite normally, not quite all-out 20/20 hitting) Hyde Heath rather collapsed and it was thanks to Jez with 30-odd, Atif and Spence that we got up to a roughly par 134 for 9.

Jez opened up with an extremely tight opening spell of 6 overs for 15, but it was only from the boundary that he managed to hit the wickets – sending in a throw of pin-point accuracy to run out one of their openers. In fact by the time I came on to bowl, we'd only taken two wickets, both to run outs, but that was all to change.

Jez cuts loose

I'd like to say I bowled amazingly, but it would be a lie – the usual array of full-tosses and long hops were all in evidence, but fortunately the batsmen weren't good enough to capitalise, and they also weren't good enough to keep out the decent deliveries, of which there were also some. Anyway, I finished with 4 for 20 off 6, and with Nick and Shrimpie also keeping things tight we closed the game out to win by about 20 runs.

All of which meant we could amble back to the pub. Thank god for that.