Consider if you will, the perfect English summer's day.
The grass beneath your ample picnic is short and soft but you smile at the youthful cheek of those few daisies that avoided the mower's teeth. A light breeze stirs the icing sugar that crests a Victoria sponge - homemade with more butter than necessary and more cream than polite. The sky is a Ukrainian blue and an anchored armada of soft white clouds shift and stir with restless ease. It's May, maybe early June and the triumphant rolling of Elgar verse leaps from every birdsong and bumble bee buzz.
By the end of the week though, there is a problem. The temperature, which had been tightly managed by wind and history, has started to rise and by Sunday, the smell of heat had taken to the air, hanging around like a childhood memory. The English have a deep, in-bred intolerance for raw heat (scones are served warm, not hot) and once the ambiently comfortable 75 degrees is passed our grumpiness radar starts to bleep away like a reversing milk float.
For generations, whilst griping about the dark and the rain, the English have held an unwritten belief that anything approaching 90 is simply not sporting - just not cricket. Accept of course last Sunday it was just that - barely at times, but it was cricket nonetheless. On a day of churlish and ugly heat, the Sarcophagi came alive.
Skipper James, with the notable help of Thwaites, had dipped deep into his battered book of cricketing characters to pull together a side to do battle with the lightly greyed genius of Philanderers. The coin toss went against the former UCLES* tweaker and Philanderers chose first use of a sneaky stripe of green softness.
Isaac and Hanwell had first use of a ball shaped like a Frenchman's favourite bulb vegetable, crafted perhaps by a back pocket and an ample pair of buttocks. The early stages were certainly competitive and it quickly became clear that early on, the main threat to the Sarcophagi bowlers would be the youngest Philanderers player, a man whose contribution to post-match war stories would largely be limited to memories of a school project about the Falkland Islands.
After a strong start from the hosts, a Frankland catch off Hanwell gave the Sarcophagi their opening 'first class' wicket.
With the contest developing nicely like a 6x4" in a vat of Chromogenic material, Hickey replaced Hanwell and quickly began to suspect that it wasn't going to be his day. Stumping appeals and comfortable catches passed in a flash and then Monk attempted to catch a miscued pull shot with all the grace of a sloth trying to catch a falling sandcastle between two rolling pins. Hickey's face was a picture. A lost mixture of bewilderment and disappointment, like a dinner party host that had just caught Winston Churchill wiping his backside with a hand towel.
Hickey's time would however come, firstly as Lord threw himself forward to take a fine catch like a man that almost missed a bus despite standing at the stop. Further wickets fell, punctuated by glorious shots from the most dog-eared pages of the manual. It had been a pleasing if not always pretty effort in the field from the Sarcophagi, with Thwaites lively behind the stumps, quipping softly like Stan Boardman at a school fete and ultimately Philanderers posted a perfectly interesting 159.
Mr Kipling and Mr P.G. Tips delivered tea, in their inimitable style, as the mercury passed out in the heat.
The Sarcophagi opening pair were Linsdell and Anstee and both started confidently until Anstee nicked a snorter. Monk joined Linsdell at the crease for the first time outside UCLES* colours. Although progress was sufficient, the Sarcophagi batsmen were clearly wearing the heat like an ill-fitting hat. With echoes of greatness in the bowling, there was no time for reflection, particularly on a wicket that threatened occasional blows to the face, like a blind man practicing Riverdance in a rake shop.
The batsmen decided to wait for one particular opening bowler to tire, but it was ultimately fruitless, like driving slowly on a trip to see your mother-in-law in the hope that her coastal home would fall into the sea before you got there. With the heat folding in on itself like a badly tossed pancake, Monk and Wylie fell away and Linsdell, batting with all the elegance of a brown bear painting toy soldiers, ended a half-century with a shot ugly enough to lose any game. With Lord gone, and clouds gathering in threatening but ineffectual pockets like Russian soldiers invading Finland in 1939, Thwaites patted back the onion for a fragrant maiden leaving a run-a-ball 18 from the final 3.
Not for the first time, Skipper James prematurely declared cricket the winner, but Thwaites had other ideas and with some scampering and decent striking he pushed The Philanderers into a disappointing but dignified third.
And so The Sarcophagi began what will doubtless be an illustrious history with a tightly yet honourably fought triumph. Once again, The Philanderers proved that aching limbs are nothing to glinting eyes and vivid memories, re-colouring the outlines of the past. Age is nothing. My great grandfather once made 114 not out for the Salvation Army at the age of 89. He was a firm believer that all runs should be made on the front foot, which is admirable, but on that particular August afternoon it did mean that he fell out of his wheelchair 27 times.
The Philanderers 159-9 (35 overs)
Isaac 7-1-23-2
Hanwell 7-0-36-2
Frankland 11-1-47-0
Hickey 7-2-23-3
Anstee 3-0-21-1
The Sarcophagi 160-5 (34.3 overs)
Linsdell 68
Anstee 6
Monk 34
Wylie 8
Lord 5
Thwaites 15 not out
Isaac 5 not out
The Sarcophagi win by 5 wickets.
