Elite athletes dressed all in white, a sense of tradition and decorum, and many shouts of “new balls please”. It wasn’t Wimbledon, but Broxbourne Sports Club Pitch 2 (we couldn’t use pitch 1 because rather chasteningly it was being used by more talented twelve year olds). 

Pacific won the toss and chose to bat, half a tactical decision and half a ‘not everyone is here yet’ decision. Simon miscued one to mid off early doors, but Pacific Started well with Amandeep and skipper Mohan building a strong second wicket partnership. One square of the wicket boundary was a massive hedge and one was a canal, and Mohan set one of the day’s main themes of splashed balls and searching the undergrowth in motion by peppering both. The boys put on 99 together before Amandeep fell LBW and Mohan holed out at long on for a great 92. 

Despite the great platform that had been set, the Pacific middle order faltered as lots of batters played themselves in before falling cheaply. Eventually Mutz and debutant Kaustubh steadied the ship and put on an unbeaten 55 for the 7th wicket to take Pacific to 225 off 40 overs.

After lunch we set about warming up for the second innings with what Simon dubbed “the worst fielding drill I’ve ever seen”. Sadly this proved to be incredibly prophetic. 

Nostradamus Wedlock and Tom took the new rock (the word rock is appropriate as it was one of those horribly hard, dark and rock-like NECL balls because Zee had accidentally/generously given the oppo our nice new ball that actually swung) and within four overs we’d dropped both of their openers. This introduced the days other two main motifs, dropped catches and the spirit of cricket. 

Graces  played aggressively and set about bringing the run rate down with some strong hitting. The openers reached 88 in quick time before Kaustubh revealed his secret weapon of an absolute cannon of a throw and ran out Pittman for a well-made 45. Then just before drinks Mutz utilised some creative footwork to stump Pal off Mohan's bowling (Mutz will say he meant it on the tik tok I’m sure). 

One he definitely did mean however was a good stumping off Faisal. Credit also has to go to Ahmed who bowled very well depsite minimal protection from the short canal-side boundary and also did Grace’s skipper Sen with a beautiful googly that seemed to rap the pad and the finger duly went up. However, Mutz told the umpire it was glove and the appeal was duly rescinded. Pat Cummins would never. 

With the run out and two stumpings, we wondered if a team had ever won a game by taking all ten wickets with these two modes of dismissal only. Emboldened by this opportunity to make history, we endeavoured to shell every catch that was offered to us throughout the innings. Whilst the Saturday XI the day before had taken all of their chances, on Sunday we managed to drop all 8 as we pioneered with our bold new stumpings and run outs only tactic. Perhaps the moment of the match was when the seventh went down and we realised that would have been ten wickets. That’s the real quiz.

An added level of irony was that our ground fielding was actually very good, with numerous direct hits and good stops on the boundary. Korgy and Jas in particular put in good shifts. Another strong point of the performance was that the worse the WinViz got, the better the chat in the field. A Pacific tradition upheld.

Led by a good 56 from Sen, Graces chased the score down in 36.2 overs and Pacific were left wondering what could have been.