After the trauma of gyppoing all over Surrey trying to find a place to play, participants were relieved to get any sort of game. Some good cricket was played here, the Gents winning easily enough, but more importantly nobody had their Sunday afternoon wasted. Dhruv Patel compiled the luckiest fifty you will ever see, the three Culasy brothers were respectively the 99^th, 100^th and 101^st Gents’ players and Jim Wright captained with a light touch, hitting it off particularly well with the young guests. Enterprise bowled well and went gung ho for the tough target, but the infrequency with which they play showed in some of their shot selection.

A thirty-five over game was agreed and play eventually started at 3.30pm. Old friend Tony Hill took the new ball with Big Keith, who disposed of Bill in the third over and Jim in the ninth. The Gent openers would face Monday morning with sixteen runs to show for a total of four innings. Such is cricket. The Charles/Dhruv stand featured some amusing running and calling as the innings trundled along at three runs an over. Keith then turned to a dual spin policy with Freedman and Heap, good thinking on a slow wicket with a little turn. The elegant left-hander duly ran himself out, smart work by Freedman recovering from a midfield in the gully. Sanjay then blasted two fours before top-edging a pull to the be-denimed Irishman James Kelly, who clung on as though his life depended on it.

After the infamous dropped catch in the World Cup Super Six clash at Headingley, that friendly Steve Waugh sledged Gibbs with the snarling comment "Herschelle, you just dropped the World Cup." Anyone coming up with that sort of remark on the Gents’ circuit, where self-deprecation is the standard, would get a stump up the rectum in short order. Luckily, Dhruv is no sledger, except of his own team-mates while umpiring. Here he offered up chance after chance. His timing was woeful. Attempted on-drives spiralled into the covers. The ball rose vertically from mis-timed hooks. Five chances were offered, none taken, and the stand of 25 saw the ton in sight before Tony holed out.

Victor, swishing across the line, and Kitan, bowled by the returning Dimond, soon fell, while Dhruv went to his fourth Gents fifty off Tony Hill. Yes, it had been extremely lucky but it also showed bags of character. He was now joined by Faisal Culasy and the highest stand of the match resulted. Faisal clearly favours the leg-side, as most thirteen year-olds do and with his brothers looked to be future stars in the making. In common with other of Dhruv’s young friends and acquaintances, their manners were impeccable and it was a pleasure to have them on board. And they only played because Dhruv Desai and Hemin Patel, originally selected, were doing their "A" levels and their dads would not let them out.

Meanwhile mentor Dhruv retired at sixty to let Aabid and Zakir have a bat. Aabid got a gritty nought, Zak a stoical one and Faisal was left 12 not out. Clearly three boys who will not just give their wickets away, some more senior players could benefit by studying the match video. The Dhruv retirement prompted some critical comment, but he had a point when he said he "had been trying to get out all innings, but my God is smiling on me." His action was probably justified in terms of investment for future Gentlemen of West London teams, but, as explained before, out he must remain for the purposes of the averages. A man who gave more than any other individual in seeing the club through the tribulations of 1998, it is a delight to be able to record some success for the lad. Sixty was his highest Gents score.

One hundred and forty eight was a tough, but not impossible ask, but it needed Keith, Graham or Tony to play a major knock. Enterprise raced out of the traps but were shot down by stunning catching, the best of the season by a distance. Tony Hill took Sanjay for a two and a cover-driven four before Graham pelted Jim through mid-wicket, over the long grass and over the chalk lines, an explosive start. Tony then edged to slip, a toughie shelled by Buck. Graham kept coming, while Dhruv calmly marched in from gully, retrieved the ball and underarmed it to bowler Sanjay, who removed the bails with Tony a yard short.

In the next over, Graham’s mistimed pull looped high over the bails, young Aabid sprinting in to take a fine, low diving catch. Keith Dimond was thus at the wicket. Nobody on the circuit hits it harder than this chap. Dhruv still attends counselling sessions after the battery inflicted when Keith guested for Chad in 1998. Two stunning fours off Sanjay, both back-foot pulls over the long-on boundary, were jaw-dropping. Jim then suckered him. Either that, or Keith started to believe his own propaganda, for a straight drive off the slower ball was magnificently pouched high to the bowler’s right.

Jim then opted for a maximum involvement strategy. Only Victor and the ‘keeper were not asked to turn their arm over. There resulted, due to an increasingly bowler-friendly wicket and the need for quick runs, plenty of catching practice for the Gents, and lo and behold if seven were not taken. This total has only been exceeded once by the Gents, v. Urbans in 1993, although the Angries managed eight in that limp Gent display in May 1998. Aabid was the hero with three, but slip Buck, pouching Kitchener off a full-toss and Sanjay (twice) got into the act as Enterprise declined to 69 by the time the 10^th wicket fell at seven o’clock. Andy Burman, still stressed to fuck and having opted for scoring duties as both sides had eleven, was then kindly given a bat. Zak’s weird right-handed Paul Adams action was a sight to behold, the ball being hidden until the moment of delivery. Andy clumped three twos but was then stumped by miles to give Aabid his fourth victim. Still, the stand was the innings’ highest.

And so the Gents gained their fifth win of the season, a figure not achieved until mid-August in 1998. Charles Arthur observed that the game had been "a gentle reintroduction to cricket." So it was, helped by a Can Do willingness to play the fixture after the earlier logistical problems and the perennial good attitude between the teams. The consensus among the Gents was that a few double headers per season are sustainable. Extended socialising then took place at the Black Lion and it was a late-night kebab that provided sustenance for this writer.