Another defeat, but this was close, and an improved performance on the previous week. Still the Gents’ 100^th victory awaits. A powerful Sunderland batting line-up reversed the trend of previous matches in this series by chasing the Gents’ gaily-posted if slightly irresponsible 125 all out. They took over 45 overs to do it against tight bowling but still had eight to spare. The hosts had a glimmer of a chance when Dhruv Patel shelled a hard, low chance at 118 for seven but the stonewall Hardy, who did not give a chance all innings, knocked off the runs to the delight of the considerable travelling contingent. History was made with the first fifty in this series, while Ian Richmond and Colin Naish beat the 10^th wicket record stand for the club, consigning to the history books the 38 runs posted by Mark Ashton and Milton Jolin in the first ever game, back in 1988.

The Gents side, missing Sanjay Patel and Snarler, looked a good batting one but with bowling thin on the ground Masher opted for a time game and chose to bat. Andy Burman had pestered him for a go up the order but sadly departed second ball. Bill followed in Trow’s next over, playing on. It’s bad enough being out so early without such helpful male-bonded comments as "You took the shine off the ball with the stumps," but such is life at the jolly level of cricket we play. Had they been England players, Andy and Bill would have doubtless been offered stress counselling and a six-figure publishing deal. On a perfect, if slow wicket, Dhruv then took control, with good support from Ashton. After a few overs of forward-defensive, while Dhruv peppered the boundary on three sides, the Commander could be seen practising his golf shots and lo and behold if he did not scoop Mick Coad about two hundred yards in the vertical plane. Any one of six fielders could have caught it but the ball fell to earth, as it usually does in Gents’ games. Thus reprieved, Masher played some good shots before slashing to slip, one of several excellent catches taken behind square over the afternoon.

Forty-nine for two, racked up in only twelve overs, soon became 64 for eight six overs later. Chris Beaumont lobbed several half-chances before edging to the ‘keeper and the latest in the club’s depressing list of batting collapses was in train. Dhruv’s 35, taking him to 212 for the season (only 27 short of his 1998 haul), had been chanceless but against Spedding’s slow-medium pace a wide long-hop was a temptation too far, and he sliced to first-slip slip Hardy, a good low catch. Sunderland were being rewarded for attacking field placements as much as their bowling. In the same way, a fortnight before, Mr Ashton’s vital wicket fell to a catch at third-slip off a spinner, at a point of the game where the Gents would probably have had six men on the boundary. Dimond drove to second slip, a fine, diving two-handed catch and when Heap top-edged the lob bowler Beddingfield to square-leg, grown men were seen weeping. Never mind, for Tony Buck (one of three batting heroes, along with Pongo and Toddy from the 1998 game) was now at the crease. Sadly, he undid the good work of a few balls’ blockage by cutting to point. It was all very sad.

The game then began to retrace the steps of that nervy 1998 minor classic. Then, the Gents had recovered from 76 for seven to post 106 and won by 25 runs. Here, the Mackems’ batting, including two excellent players new to this series in Hardy and Nichol, was a class stronger and something a tad over the ton would never be enough. However, at 64 for eight they would have settled for three figures. That they were to go some way beyond this owed much to dogged persistence and the patience to wait for the bad ball to come along, something previous, supposedly more senior batsmen, had been palpably unable to do.

Toddy started the fun by lifting two of many Beddingfield full-tosses for four over long-off. Victor was looking secure, and played Spedding particularly well, clipping him through mid-wicket to the short railway boundary. Toddy then sportingly walked after a fine edge to the ‘keeper unnoticed by umpire Patel, who was in full coaching mode at this point. It was now last orders in the Last Chance Saloon as Colin Naish joined Victor. Sunderland did not seem worried at this stage; after all they had already beaten West XI, Twelve Angry Men and London Saints fairly convincingly in 1999, following on from their victorious Lord Nelson Cup campaign of September 1998. Sensibly but assertively, Victor and Colin then began to create their own piece of club history. Beddingfield’s full-tosses were cracked away for ones and twos, Colin’s cover-drive and Victor’s pull began to flourish and Sunderland began to bicker. This was not a full-on, in yer face Mutually Assured Destruction bitching session of the kind the Gents displayed against Wandham, but it was nonetheless encouraging to the two Gent heroes. The hundred came up in the 24^th over, maintaining the tidy rate, and visions of 150 were perhaps entering the minds of several when Colin holed out to cover. They had done very well and departed to sustained applause from the oppo.

One hundred and twenty five was below par, but not a disaster. The Gents needed some resolute bowling and inspiring captaincy. What they most certainly did not need were the diametric opposites of these attributes off Ball One of the innings. A Masher leg-side loosener was neatly glanced backward of square-leg Victor. The openers ran one. It would have been a single in an Australia v. South Africa game. Astonishingly, Masher thought otherwise and gave Victor the full works. Words fail us sometimes.

Maybe it fulfilled a psychological need, though, for after that Masher led well. Attacking fields were kept up all innings. Has the ghost of Defensive Field Placements finally been laid? The point here is that with dodgy council outfields, a chap on the boundary has an impossible job. Anything struck a couple of yards either side of him will be four, while anything coming to him will as likely kick up and hit him in the gonads as rest comfortably in his hands. We are not proposing nine slips, such as Dennis Lillee once had, but a few more in for the catches usually pays dividends. The Gents still set too many fields for the bad ball.

Still, astute captaincy never won a match on its won. The Gents bowled their bollocks off between 4.20pm and seven o’clock (including twenty minutes for "tea") and made enough inroads to generate a climax of some tension. Ashton was challenging, Toddy occasionally hostile, Dhruv intelligent and Dimond and Buck accurate after nervous starts. The gnomish Curry was yorked and straight after tea Andy Nichol, unable to come to terms with the slow wicket, played on to Dhruv. There then followed the sensational dismissal of Mark Stewart, with cover Naish diving to stop the ball and while still no the floor athletically throwing to Beaumont, the batsman a yard short. Dhruv then bowled Rough and the game was about equal.

From the Gents’ point of view, what was a real pisser was the way that each new batsman could obviously bat. Buck and Naish, for example, remembered the Sunderland v. Chad game from 1996, when after dismissing the ex-pats’ main batters cheaply, Mick Coad then came in and smashed a brutal fifty. Here, he batted eight. By then, Sephton and Trow had fallen, the latter plumb lbw to Mr Buck, replacing Mr Ashton, who had bowled five successive maidens before losing his line and having a blow.

Meanwhile, Mr Hardy went on and on. Coad drove lustily – the killer blow - before edging the returning Toddy to Chris off a lifter, too little too late but certainly the ball of the day. A friendly, sporting Sunderland team were just too strong on the day, but there will be little in it when the Gents have a little more depth in the bowling.