The V&A’s cricket fixture against The Times was not the only big match being played on Saturday, 19 May. There were rival attractions at Wembley and Windsor, with the latter prompting V&A wags to trot out a succession of jokes beginning with “Where’s Megan?” or “Where’s Meghan?” before deliberately confusing Ross and Harry or Stonor and Windsor.

There is of course one important difference between the Duchess of Sussex and the Duchess of Stonor – one has an aitch, the other doesn’t. This makes it easy to distinguish between them in print. But there are similarities too. Both are gorgeous women who have travelled from faraway lands to marry hunky Englishmen. But whereas Meghan’s bloke exerted himself only to don a succession of fetching uniforms, briefly drive a car, lift a veil and bestow a kiss, Megan’s not only drove, but fetched and carried, did plenty of child-minding, scored a magnificent hundred, offered sweaty kisses all round, then swapped his helmet for a V&A cap, in which he took a brilliant low catch, and almost brought off another, high to his left hand.

Ross was not the only star of the day. The captain did what captains are supposed to do: he won the toss and chose to bat on a sunny day with a firm pitch and a fast outfield. To be honest, I wasn’t all that confident about our batting line-up, with no Taylors, Mounsey-Thear, de Caires, Ayling or Poynter. I needn’t have worried. Ashcroft opened with Nick P-G playing the Emley role and they were soon knocking along nicely at five runs an over before Nick missed a straight one.

Enter Nick Constantine, and the scoring rate began to increase. The bowling was hardly threatening and although the slow left-armer Chris Evans bowled a brilliant first over, he seemed to lose his action thereafter. One lusty swipe to leg rocketed over the boundary rope, where Lachlan was sheltering Alexia Ashcroft, then bounced and nearly parted the hair of young George Jacot before thudding into the wall of the pavilion. We have an insurance policy, but we must keep an eye on the youngsters.

Eventually wicketkeeper Ahmed shed his gloves and started bowling. He was rather better, but the V&A batsmen were well set by now, and damage limitation was the order of the day. At lunch we were 176 for 1 off 22 overs.

Can Meghan cook, I wonder? Our Megan certainly can. Coronation chicken was accompanied by some delicious rice with the odd bean and pomegranate, plus beetroot and tomato salads. I was not the only one to come back for seconds.

After lunch, Nick Constantine was out for 65, scored off 44 balls (the Pritchard-Gordon scoring method is wonderfully thorough). This was his highest score for the V&A and confirms his status as a front-line batsman of quality. He will surely eclipse it soon.

Nick’s place was taken by Louis Jacot, who amazingly sent the scoring rate even higher. In the estimation of the cricketing purists gathered on the boundary, young Jacot has an aesthetic edge on Constantine, the left hand more pronounced, the straight and cover driving being especially fine, the timing exquisite.

When Ross was out for 103 (115 balls), we were 244 for three. In the three remaining overs, Lachlan and Louis smashed a further 46 runs, leaving The Times to score an improbable 291 for victory. Lachlan was run out going for a third run off the last ball, having scored 25 off 15. Louis was undefeated on 56 off a mere 30 balls – a gem of an innings which completely put Annette Jacot off her crossword, as Adam kept elbowing her to admire her grandson’s strokeplay.

The Times’s batting would have had to be much better than their bowling if they were to make a serious attempt at their target. It wasn’t. Their opener missed Christiaan’s second ball, a full toss which thudded into the base of the stumps. I then deployed eight bowlers, most of whom took wickets. The Times were unlucky that Ahmed, their best player, had torn a rib muscle while bowling (he had started by keeping wicket) and was forced to retire hurt without scoring. After 17 overs, they were 42 for 5.

Thanks to a few late and lusty legside blows from their captain Mike Austin (prompting the ever-grumpy Christiaan to protest, not for the first time, “Haven’t you got any other shots?”), they avoided the ignominy of being beaten by more than 200 runs in a 35-over match.

There were at least a couple of distinguished Times alumnae on show (Mike Evans, Roger Alton and M Ahmed), but as is the way with many teams, they were obliged to recruit from outside. The traditional role of ringers is to strengthen the team, and add competitive spirit. In this case, they failed in both respects, being both incompetent and gentlemanly. It was left to bona fide Times man Roger Alton to provide some needle, chuntering away when I reintroduced Christiaan towards the end of the game (he hadn’t batted and had only had bowled three overs, so I had to give him a bit more action). Unfortunately, his implication that deploying a quickie against a tailender is unsporting was rather undermined by the fact that he was out stumped by wicketkeeper Phil, standing up. Roger does work for the Daily Mail nowadays, which may explain a lot.

In every other respect, The Times were a sportsmanlike and genial lot, who fielded a full 11 and stumped up their match fees promptly. It was a shame that hardly any of us got to have a drink with them in the pub afterwards, but someone sent them off to The Crown while Ross and Christiaan headed for the more child-friendly Golden Ball, while Lachlan took me and Nick Constantine back to London. He then very kindly dropped me at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, where my split lip (sustained when fending off a vicious NP-G bouncer in the net before the game) was attended to and no stitches were required. Thank you for all your messages of sympathy and support.