A blistering day had sunk into a hot evening when ten out of the promised XI assembled at Sulis. We never found out what happened to the other one. BuroHappold have a rivers and coastal department and had been asked to bring along a spare river to cool off in, but instead they brought a string of competent-looking batsmen. The first one rather spoilt the effect by giving Gregory the charge, but this did allow Arvind to show off his stumping technique (actually it was a good stumping, as the ball had flicked a pad as it went through). Another competent-looking batsman appeared; then another, and another, as we picked up wickets from time to time or they just got bored and retired in the 30s. The odd thing was that the standard didn't seem to vary. Apart from the opener they all got a reasonable score, but none of them did anything special. It was as if they were finding it easy, except that they didn't. In the end they made 152 in 20 overs, quite a lot but not unreachable.

Their opening bowler ran in hard and bowled a good-length ball on middle and leg to Arvind. Arvind said later that he was pushing it straight towards the vacant mid-on, but what he actually did was play a wild heave across the line and get bowled. We feared that their Indians were better than our Indians. Andy, his cigarette unsmoked, stomped out to bat looking disgusted. But he and Roger soon ran them ragged. Roger also ran Andy ragged: he was close to spontaneous combustion when made to run three, and again when he found out, much later, that the scorers hadn't believed it and had recorded only two anyway. The opposition bowling was less consistent than their batting, and they tended to bowl in very short spells anyway. It was as if they thought they didn't have to try hard. Indeed it was beginning to get difficult, because some clouds, the first for weeks, had blown in from the west and the light was failing. They chipped out a few wickets, but we kept the run rate high, Andy was still there, and eventually the good opening bowler was recalled in the gloom. And we were wrong: our Indians were better than theirs. Chintan, who had already pushed the rate up by insisting on running, took thirteen off the over, and after that it was a gentle stroll to an unexpectedly convincing win.