The NTs were short, in every sense. No Mike Morris, all six foot seven of him and only eight players, and a weakish eight at that. So Martin [our skip] lent them Adam Jacot. That made us 8 and them 9. Two of our lowest scoring batsmen were to bat twice, and one of theirs. Handing them Adam might seem like insinuating a Trojan Horse, given his recent form, but Adam confounded his critics, all ten of them.

Because they were perceived as weak we batted first in a game in which we were limited to 35 overs, but they had 20 overs after 4.20 pm in which to knock off the runs or play for the draw. A straight overs game might have been a bummer if we were too strong.

At first things seemed to be going predictably. Rupert swished the bat and hit boundaries. Adam dropped an easy catch. But then Adam bowled Peter Kirkham (no fluke, a damned good ball). Then, fuck me, Adam did it again! He bowled Rupert (31, six 4s). Sunil came in, was dropped three times (they dropped 7 catches in all) and went (LBW), Bird N got a quick 19 (including one 6) and with Dennis seemed to have steadied the ship when Dennis, on 28 (five 4s) walloped a ball towards Adam at deep square leg. I was umpiring. I expected Adam to duck. He did not. He stuck out a hand and the thing stuck. Whether by accident or design he would not tell. He once did that for us but it is rare. But then, fuck me again, he repeated the exercise and caught Jonkers for a duck! Bird T and Bowden stayed briefly before Christiaan in his second innings made the score respectable (150) with 32, including three 6s, one of which was the biggest I have seen and reached the pavilion. But we were all out four overs short of our limit, and another 25 runs would have been handy. Their leggy, Hanbury, and Adam had done the damage.

Lunch was made by Sarah, picked up by Rupert. It was entirely adequate. No beef. Cold pork, ham, pork pies. Not very kosher.

We had four bowlers who were going to have to bowl a lot of overs. All would have been well if Rupert, fielding at mid on, had caught their skipper and opener, Peter Singh. But he did not. He had in fact four bites at the cherry. It lobbed gently into his hands. He fumbled it. He tried to catch it again but fumbled a bit more. The he repeated the exercise before dropping it. He said later that the V&A award for Drop of the Year has been suspended as he is the default winner and anyway does not want to draw attention to his clumsiness. To illustrate his maladroit catching he dropped another at square leg which was just a bit easy peasy. Unfortunately this allowed their openers, Peter and David Lumsden to reach 70 without loss, which was a nice platform. When they were on 30 or so a sharp throw by Tom looked to have run out David quite easily, but the umpire, without benefit of replay, turned the appeal down.

Eventually we did get some wickets, after some expensive overs from Sunil and Dennis (saving his strength by bowling tweakers). Dennis got a plumb LBW, there was a nifty run out by Birds N and T, Martin picked up a wicket but we did not record our performance in the field and I forget all the details, it was so long ago. But one cannot forget what happened next.

With 50 or so to get they needed at least 5 an over. Greg Wise came in to join Adam. Greg skied his first ball to Martin at point but it just evaded him. Adam then did something he does not always do for the V&A. The fucker walloped sixes and fours all over the ground, off good balls, off bad balls. He was imperious, hitting through the ball with power. He may have a limited range of shots, in fact it is limited to one, but it is a very effective shot. And he won the match with an enormous 6.

So the Trojan Horse we had planted turned out to be Achilles without the dicky heel. A hero of the day, two amazing catches, 47 runs, two wickets in a spell of 8 overs that went for 3 an over. With two maidens! When has he done that for the V&A? A hero indeed, but for the other side. Bastard.