V&A PLAYERS:  N Bird, T P-G, N P-G, C Jonkers, S Julka, A Jacot [Skip], N Emley, L Niebohr, R Ashcroft, D de Caires, M Bowden, C Mounsey-Thear 

THE ALL SORTS were founded almost 40 years ago by three Old Harrovians, the cricket correspondents Ivo Tennant and Geoffrey Dean (who is also a wine man) and our own Simon Jacot, father of the more famous Louis, and brother of Adam, our skipper for the day. Adam appeared to have lost his razor again. It is always a pity when a middle aged man lets himself go, you don’t get Christiaan turning up in unpressed trousers, or egg on his stubble.

Louis told me last week that the All Sorts were ‘like us, mostly old with a few young ones to help in the field.’ Bollocks. The first six All Sorts to turn up were virile young men who promptly started warming up and throwing balls around professionally. They looked fearsomely good, and so they proved. The older members weren’t deadbeats like ours, but ex county or club cricketers. I recall Mr Dean as a frightfully fast bowler. He had slowed up but was no rabbit. We ruminated on our front line attack of old, de Caires, Adam Jacot, Bowden, and could not fail to remark upon the more sedate speed of today against the venom of yesterday.

We lost the toss and they batted. Simon Jacot opened and looked classy, with one beautiful cover drive for 4. But he was soon bowled by a beauty from Lachlan (whose 1 for 27 off his seven overs was the pick of our bowlers). But then we rather toiled in the sun. Ivo Tennant’s boy Tom opened the batting for Harrow and it showed. He gave perhaps one chance to short leg off Lachlan, but as short leg had moved to square leg it went begging.

With his partner Murray they put on more than 150, after lunch scoring at 8 an over before Sunil bowled him (I think Tom got himself out but don’t tell Sunil). Being 12^th man I was sitting with Dennis’s missus Estelle and watching him bowl. She was willing him to get a wicket. Typically, when he bowled Murray at the death her nose was buried in her book. The de Caires’s lovely daughter Odille asked me some searching cricket questions, probably to test me. How many balls in an over? I got nearly 100% for that but thank God she didn’t quiz me about the LBW rules, or Duckworth Lewis. Odille is going out with a Frenchman, but we are a liberal bunch.

At one point Lachlan asked me to sub for him in the field while he went to the lav. I stood on the boundary. I could see the batsman swipe at a ball but couldn’t see the actual ball and thus did not move. It landed quite near me. Adam shouted something rude and I went back to talking cricket with Odille – talking rather than playing cricket suits me.

They scored 219 in their 35 overs. A prodigious target. Tom P-G bowled nicely (0 for 31), so too did Chris M-T (0 for 42) but Jonkers, coming on when the batsmen were whacking everything, was more expensive (0 for 55). We missed the Taylor brothers, they save perhaps 30 runs in the field.

A photographer from The Henley Standard took pictures all day, which will be useful for the archive. At one point he asked us to pose and you could see Mounsey-Thear sucking in his stomach and lifting his chins; but the camera does not lie. The photographer chappie took a posed snap of Dennis doing a reverse sweep with Simon Jacot looking like a proper wicketkeeper behind. Most unconvincing.

Lunch and tea were courtesy of Jessica, and they were superb. An excellent chilli sensa carne was served at luncheon, washed down with Indian lager (brewed in Park Royal). Tea was bountiful. I took a photo to show our tea lady, I thought it would be more tactful than telling her to buck her ideas up. I am afraid we talked football at lunch: Leicester’s chances next year, Rooney’s decline (possibly distracted by groping grannies)… until we were soundly scolded by Christiaan who reminded us that talking footy in the cricket season was verboten. So I turned the conversation to underwear, and the Estonian barmaid in The Crown.

We opened with Nick Pritchard-Gordon and Chris M-T. What a different pitch to the last two puddings! Dry, with the ball coming on to the bat. Although Nick was bowled for 4 by young Broad, who also bowled Lachlan and Dennis, Chris and Ross Ashcroft (batting 5) struck a succession of boundaries to make the fearsome total gettable. But then the turncoat Louis Jacot, playing for the All Sorts, caught Ross (30) and Chris (40) soon followed, also caught. Even their old men ran and stooped to make catches, something we would consider inappropriate, even vulgar. Cowdrey never ran.

Jonkers and Adam came and went. Jonkers, incidentally, is moving his second hand bookshop across the street in Henley. I peered in and saw a workman at work and knew immediately he couldn’t be English.

We needed almost 10 an over off the last 6 or 7 overs, and if it was too much of an ask the batsmen – Julka and Emley – set about the bowling admirably. Emley has been criticised for stodgy batting in the past but here was a man transformed, cutting beautifully, driving like May. There were 4 fours in his innings of 25*; Sunil scored a brisk 35 – with one huge six over the long Pishill boundary – before being caught by one of their unbelievably agile fielders. There was one chap who slid to stop a boundary, and in one movement rose and hurled the ball to the top of the sumps in a flat trajectory. If it had been me the batsmen would have run five, and the ball would have been passed in a relay to the keeper.

We ended our 35 overs well short, on 176. But it had been a marvellous bit of batting by Chris and Ross, and Sunil and Nick Emley, with narry a wally bowler to face. I should, as an aside, apologise to Nick Emley for suggesting in last week’s Match Report that he was a connoisseur of fine weed. I meant of course ‘weeds’. He knows a thing or two about things that grow wild in the hedgerows. We chatted about him being an old lefty. I asked whether he was a Trot. No! He was a member of the International Socialists, not the International Marxist Group! Completely different lot from the running dogs of the IMG.

The All Sorts are most agreeable and we will see them next year. We went to The Crown where the Estonian barmaid pretended not to notice me. Tom Bird is getting married next week. Christiaan and Chris M-T went to his stag night last Saturday. Chris failed to pace himself and has no memory of how he got home. A bit like Tom P-G on any Saturday of the year. My trick is to pre-order my cab for 9.30, before I do card tricks and talk underwear.