It was the perfect setting for our new club caps to be revealed to the world. Yesterday’s match was against one of the best clubs in Oxfordshire, Banbury, who had beaten us handsomely in our inaugural fixture last year. It was a bright enough day to justify wearing caps. It was the mid-point of our season, the sixteenth fixture of our scheduled thirty-one matches. Our cap-wearing club vice-captain scored a century. He was well-supported by the lower-middle order. Then we withstood Banbury’s century opening partnership, scored in double quick time, and bounced back with three spinners taking three wickets each, plus a run out. We won!

http://www.middletonstoneycc.co.uk/club-news/2019/mscc-vs-banbury-cc-2019/

The only things missing were the caps themselves. As previously reported, the bespoke caps had eventually made their hand-crafted way to our local sports shop. Our club secretary, who had assured us they would be ready for the start of the season, insisted on Friday that only he should collect all twenty-six of the caps to bring them to the game for distribution. He did not come to the game cap in hand, though. A teacher, whose school had broken up on Friday, and a league player for another club on Saturdays, he claimed that when he got to the shop, it was closed. We explained that this is how shops operate. If you arrive after their advertised closing time, they are closed.

He now tried to turn the half-season delay to his advantage, arguing that we had waited so long that another few days would not matter. He will bring them for the T20 game on Wednesday. Yes but a T20 game in the dark is not the same as a Sunday match in the light, not when it comes to cap-wearing. Plus, the club vice-captain and I, and others who have ordered caps, are not in the side for Wednesday. Above all, we won, for the second Sunday in a row, against very good opposition.

This is the lot of the village club cricket captain, that the ideal opportunity for launching some initiative just doesn’t quite work out as intended, much as in wider life.

On the other hand, there was much to enjoy in the game itself, as the Banbury captain used nine bowlers, their opener hit two big sixes at the start of our second over, and their top three run-scorers were all clean bowled by one of our spinners. Our two senior spinners not only took three wickets each but they both volunteered (‘Up to you, skip, but why don’t you give others a go?’) to come off to give a less experienced spinner his turn. He also took three wickets, including the last one to win the game by 42 runs, after we had set Banbury a target of 231.

My counterpart at Banbury CC, Mark Austin, lost no time at all in starting the mind games for next year’s encounter, tweeting that he and I should open our respective innings next year, rather than batting at 11, and that I should give myself a bowl.

That way, though, defeat would be staring us in the face (even if the caps have by then reached us to offer some protection) so I am not falling for that one and we hope that the club chooses a skipper for next year’s game who can similarly resist such siren calls.

Looking on the bright side (which is pretty much all we can do, in the absence of the caps), my sense is that a record number of cameras were brought along to record the caps or, in the case of the Hon Secretary, to distract us from the cap vacuum. Capitalising on our cap mishap, innovative camera angles and methods have given us fresh perspectives on aspects of our club that we might have been taking for granted. For example, the match-winning spinner had brought a sophisticated camera, a mini-tripod and a time-lapse mechanism to give us a spectacular overview of the game. The Honorary Secretary took photos when he was umpiring at the bowler’s end! Our Treasurer, who was playing, orchestrating his family providing the tea, and running the bar, also found the time to frame the photo above, a window on our world, looking out from the pavilion. All of which matters more, I suppose, than finding out whether the cap fits.