At the end of July the rain came, not quite quickly enough to prevent the match against Cramer taking place. Cold Indians shivered in tracksuits - the Cramer team consisted entirely of Indians, although they didn't notice that themselves until they got started - but the English had also acclimatised to the conditions of the rest of the month and were just as uncomfortable. Two rather capable batsmen opened the innings for Cramer with a rattle, peppering the square-leg boundary, and there were forty runs on the board before we knew it. Rob Turner broke the stand with a rather bad ball which was, at least, on the off side and was miscued to Andy at cover. The standard of batting dropped dramatically: we had dismissed the more elegant of the openers, and the new batsman began as he meant to go on, with four runs to fine leg as he aimed at mid-off.

Perhaps it was a mistake, though, to keep him on strike. His confidence and his luck grew, and he even produced several competent square cuts. He was given out, stumped, at one stage, but nobody had appealed, for the good reason that the wicket-keeper (Roger) didn't have the ball. In the end it was the other opener who went, and after that we were among the blue tracksuits. Wickets kept falling: Roger got a real stumping, a good batsman in whites made a brief appearance and got out absurdly to a full toss (a good catch by Richard helped), a tracksuit patted the ball gently to backward short leg and hared down the pitch, and so on. But we never stopped them scoring for long, though Nick nearly did before he pulled a muscle and Rob B also bowled tidily. Neither did we quite bowl them out, and so it was getting dark when we started out to chase 123 to win.

At the end of last July Gregory was asked to open the batting on a wet day and was quite successful. This time he was out as soon as the ball came anywhere near him, but by that time Andy had finished his cigarette and was ready to bat. He scored a single and Rob T was out to the next ball. Cramer were more pleased with these successes than the situation really warranted. Now they had to deal with the batsmen. Andy and Mark had to work for a while: Cramer had one consistently accurate bowler and one wildly inaccurate one, who would bowl two wides and then a fabulous inswinging yorker. Eventually one of these did for Mark, and James came out to face the remaining four balls of the over. After a few minutes, by which time he was at the non-striker's end, he asked the umpire how many balls were left. Still four: there had been two wides, two head-high full tosses, and a more conventional no-ball, and there were more to come. The bowler had never been accurate, but the ball was wet by now and he couldn't grip it.

Other bowlers found it a bit easier but James and Andy settled the match in the next few overs. James was no less effective than Andy at putting away bad balls, and the extras also mounted. The run rate was always reasonable, and one over in which Andy hit a six and four put it above that. Eventually one of James's swings failed to connect, and Roger joined Andy; but then it began to rain hard. We still needed fifteen, with six wickets and six overs remaining; but Cramer had had enough and conceded defeat. If I have understood the Duckworth/Lewis tables correctly, which is not especially likely, we won by 46 runs.