The Millfields pitch, after a fair few days of decent weather, was as good as this correspondent has seen it play as Pacific took on Canary Wharf Royal in the North East London Cricket League – and Ben Burnham would take full advantage as he hit his way to a personal best with the bat. 

Tristan had put in solid defence to see off some tight swing bowling with the new ball. When Jas Bas fell LBW to an in-swinging yorker, that brought Benbob to the crease. Early in his innings he had a stroke of luck when he played the ball back on to his stumps and the bails remained put. He would later be dropped a couple of times as he progressed to his highest ever score of 92, with a succession of cover drives and lofted drives as he hit the Royals around the park, showing them no deference despite the Platinum Jubilee. He was bowled playing a typically aggressive shot, the ball beating his bat and clipping the bails, which this time were very much dislodged. When later ribbed about not making it to three figures, he replied that the headline to the match report could be "The Farce of 92". Still, no doubt his mother will be proud of his effort as she reads this from the comfort of the SSD.

Benbob had enjoyed an 82 partnership with Daniel Humphrey, whom Umrish said he would not like to bowl at, as the Mackem made another decent score in his debut season at Pacific CC. He may hate London but he loves scoring runs on the cricket pitches of Hackney. Then the trustafarian Seb Maltz, who had more than enough hair for both batsmen, impressed with a run-a-ball 46 in a partnership of 78 with Benbob and Pacific finished on 236 in our 40 overs.

In response, Canary Wharf got off to a flyer despite losing a couple of early wickets as they took advantage of the probably over-attacking field with a succession of boundaries. In truth we were short of frontline seamers. Dan complained about having to open the bowling but was rewarded with a couple of wickets. All of the bowlers struggled to stem the flow of runs and umpire Abdul continued to be unforgiving about anything remotely wide. Jas Bas took a blinding catch above his head at point off Hamza's bowling, yet despite our strong first-innings score, a win seemed to be slipping well beyond our reach.

But cometh the hour, cometh the man – in the form of Jack Mendel, who has this season reinvented himself as a leg-spinner, having previously bowled in-swingers. Jack kept things tight and applied the pressure that had hitherto been lacking as he twirled away and bamboozled the batsmen. Tristan, meanwhile, had now handed the wicketkeeping kit over to Seb and was bowling his medium pacers from the other end. At last we were applying some pressure and giving the Pacific fan club of Shaline, Umrish, Manav and Emily something to cheer about. As the game went down to the wire we had the Royals nine wickets down and Jack, already on four wickets, would have made it five had a fielder who shall remain nameless [Colin] not dropped a tough flat catch at mid-on that would have won us the game.

Still, considering our lack of frontline seamers it was a good effort and Pacfic spirits were high in the Princess of Wales after the match.

Let the Pacific Records show, if ever tech supremo Rahul can work out how to upload them to the site, that this was a "home" game.