The new look 6s, with 5 teenagers, a new skipper and unbounded optimism rocked up to the ground behind the White Horse pub in Ampfield, a ground that was once dual use with football in the winter. For a football season in the mid 1980s the pub team in the Winchester & District League included a player hailed in his prime by legendary Man Utd boss Sir Matt Busby as the “finest centre forward in Europe” – anyone hazard a guess who? Back to the summer sport, and skipper Neil McSparron did what was as rare as hen’s teeth last season – he won the toss. Sensibly he chose to bat on a hard pitch with a lightning fast outfield on a hot day.

We lost Rachel Hegarty early on, but then Simon Lambert put bat to ball pretty aggressively, and with Neil put on 71 in good time before Neil was bowled for 24. Shortly afterwards Simon reached his 50, and with Adeel Raja at the crease runs continued to flow, particularly in boundaries. Adeel and Simon had put on 57, with Adeel on 23 before he was adjudged leg before. The score was now 136 for 3, and in strode Abdul Asmari on competitive debut, and he put bat to ball with vigour. At the other end Simon continued serenely, blocking the good balls and punishing the frequent less good ones. Simon’s previous best St Cross was 73, and in the 36th over he got to his maiden St Cross 100, a splendid effort combining patience with stroke play.

Abdul weighed in with purpose, and the pair put on 124 runs in just 14 overs as the Ampfield fielding wilted. Abdul marked his debut with 63* off 55 balls (12 fours) and Simon carried his bat for the full 40 overs for 126* (2 sixes and 22 fours) at a run a ball.

Ampfield provided a veritable cornucopia of delectable items for the match tea, with the fruit cake particularly to your correspondent’s liking. It was a shame we then had to field, as browsing the buffet could have happily passed away the rest of the afternoon.

To the field we dragged ourselves, and very quickly we had two wickets, both caught by Thomas Fryer (marking a memorable day for pere et fils), one off Adeel and the other off Abdul. 20 runs later at 46 the 3rd wicket fell, Abdul with another, this time clean bowled. It became 67 for 4 when Simon also claimed a clean bowled, then Rollo Collett (also on debut) bagged his first wicket, again clean bowled.

The next pair then dug in, and with the shadows lengthening they had added 41 before Will Exley’s pace beat the Ampfield top scorer on 44. Rachel then claimed her first Northern Hemisphere wicket with yet another clean bowled, and at 120 for 7 the fat lady was warming up. She burst into song when Abdul bowled numbers 9 and 10, and he was on for a debut 5-for to go with his batting when the last Ampfield batter was too damaged from his fielding efforts to make the crease.

Ampfield were all out for 137, Abdul finishing on 4 for 29, we had won by 123 runs and now sit joint top of the table.

Next Saturday we host Paultons 4s at the Cheriton Bowl, if James Moore’s hours of pitch rolling pay off we could be in for another run-fest.