Still, enough of the football and back to the game that would have been "in doubt" if it was England playing and not the Germans. A little bit of World Cup orientated banter did pass between our debutant Kiwi, Steve Bulman and our "Slovakian Stud" Peter (now identified by Barry as no Arnold Schwarzenegger but possibly a "lady boy"...) but here we all were, preparing to play against a sixth eleven, kids and their dads as described by our eminent chairman. 

But hang on, the other five elevens play league cricket (sounds ominous...) and didn't their first eleven win the Surrey Premier league a couple of seasons back (more ominous...) and didn't one of their teenage players become the first Surrey County Cricket player, just the other week, to record a 20/20 ton (maybe you can see where this is heading...)? Well, yes, and at the end of the day, they were twice the team we were or, put another way, we could only get half the runs they did in recording a defeat by a whopping 130 runs! 

Their skipper won the toss and duly elected to bat on yet another balmy summer's day, the Mynthurst wicket looking reasonable and the boundary ropes set out to maximum thus giving an enormous outfield to be covered by the Graveney fielders. Very quickly, it looked as if that outfield was going to be the grave of several Graveney fielders and bowlers as the Priory VI openers raced away at a rate of nine an over, skipper Moody issuing a rallying cry to his troops at the first drinks break telling them to "not worry about the singles, give yourself room to stop the fours as the ball's racing away like an Exocet missile across this table top outfield!" 

After a couple of missed chances, the breakthrough finally came when "Bigger" Tim castled Massey who had rocketed to a well struck 103 out of an opening partnership of 158. The fact that Priory only added 99 further runs in the rest of their innings was testament to the bowlers and fielders reigning the opposition back in.  Debutant Bulman picked up a wicket in his first match and held on to a skier in calm fashion and Nick Goodburn snaffled an excellent one-handed catch for the very tops of the grass when the ball seemed to have died on him and looked like going to ground. Their were two wickets for Gray and one each for Eveleigh, Weston and Pradeep whose final figures of 7-2-14-1 were outstanding in a total of 257/7 from 40 overs. 

The generous Priory boys even shared some of their tea (everybody had been advised to bring their own sandwiches...) with the motley Graveney crew who then proceeded to succumb to their opponents when it came to attempting to chase down their target, all bar two clean bowled - the other two succumbed to LBWs (both batsmen had their doubts about the decisions but hey ho, such is your luck sometimes...) - and, at 56 for 8, it looked as if the margin of defeat would be considerably high. However, there followed two entertaining 30+ stands for the ninth and tenth wickets, Bulman smiting a couple of mighty fours in his 15, Vibert shocking everyone with his unbeaten 20 and "Rodders" grabbing the man of the match award for his boundary laden 38. Still, 130 runs was quite a margin of defeat.