It was cold at Kingswood. It always is. The bones of the woolly mammoths that roamed there after the glaciation ended, about last Friday, can be found in the main scorebox. Since it is difficult to keep the score accurately if you are being haunted by a woolly mammoth, we used the new portable scoreboard, which is quite easy to operate and entirely illegible from the middle. It was not so easy for the operators to keep up with Andy and Luke, who set off at a tremendous pace. Andy said afterwards that Luke's batting could not be less orthodox, which only shows that he didn't see him bat last year; but he did not deny that it was very effective, and the combination of the two of them is extremely awkward to bowl at. In due course Luke missed, and Ian contributed a rather undignified duck, but once Rob T had narrowly escaped being stumped he and Andy kept things moving. By the half-way stage we had 70 on the board,

After that it got worse. Kingswood had one fairly quick bowler, but with Andy well set and peppering Beckford's Tower if anybody pitched short to him, fast bowlers were not economical. They also had a fairly straight slow-medium bowler, and Rob T, Kevin and Paul all got into trouble trying to hit him. Kevin left with a big smile on his face, only later turning to check that Gregory had indeed given him out lbw. Will, Andy and, when Andy was out, Owain prevented anything going too badly wrong but a total of 116 was a little disappointing. The setting sun, effectively blinding the batsman at one end for the last few overs, was one reason.

Eight balls into the Kingswood innings 116 looked like plenty. Rob Branston bowled an accurate over and Gregory, from the sun end, picked up a wicket with his second ball. This was a good catch by Andy, keeping wicket. He stayed down, perhaps because he couldn't see anything either and didn't know the ball had been bowled until he caught it. Gregory, after consulting Paul's sundial, later switched from round the wicket to over, and was taken off after three overs when he ran out of crease and could follow the sun no farther. One mighty slog off him and a few invisible byes had kept the scoring rate from getting very low, and although Rob remained accurate Ian, who replaced him, was not. Duncan, who replaced Gregory, also seemed to be invisible, to judge by the batsmen's playing of him, but tended to concede four byes rather than one. (Andy made no mistakes at the other end, where he could see the ball.) At this point we were getting a little worried.

Paul started off with a mixed over in which he nearly got a wicket with one of the less distinguished balls, Luke reaching but dropping a hard catch. Fortunately Duncan gave Paul the benefit of the doubt, and was rewarded with three more good overs. As time began to run out and the sun finally disappeared, wickets began to fall, first to Paul, then to Will and a run-out. The asking rate rose, driven higher by Kingswood's inability to count to overs correctly. Will kept his head, Kevin contributed one effective over, Andy managed a long-range stumping, Owain caught a catch in the gloom, and Kingswood were still a dozen runs short with three balls left when they found that their remaining batsmen, if any, had gone home. One must contrast with this the devotion to duty of Jitan, who was not selected to play but turned up anyway and umpired unobtrusively and well all evening. Then he did go home, missing out on the tea and free beer at nine in the evening.