Amazing Grace

The Gents proceeded to an easy victory - the biggest by runs in their history - but of far more importance was the chance to play at a magnificent venue, steeped in history, against generous, friendly opponents after rain had caused the 2007 fixture to be cancelled. Sloane Club is a private members club whose facilities manager is Yoss Donovan, the FC Chad stalwart from the 1990's. He was able to negotiate the use of Burton's Court, the beautiful, historic ground of The Guards Cricket Club. The pavilion was festooned with paintings and photographs of The Guards' teams from the 1890's to the present day. Particularly poignant were the adjacent snaps from 1913 and 1919, with several of the surviving officers looking none too clever, but old Montagu the umpire still hale and hearty. By the 1930's, with political correctness gone mad, he had acquired his own initial, E. One of the surviving 1913 outfit was a Captain who had only been bumped up to Major by 1919. In a war which saw soldiers promoted General at 25 this was a truly staggering rate of career advancement.

With splendid views of Chelsea Hospital, idiosyncratic ground rules about how boundaries were counted, a remote controlled electronic scoreboard and, latterly, a UFO, this was a ground to cherish and to do anything to secure an invitation back. A pompous outbreak of bellowing by Mr Denton at the scorer (who had forgotten to clone himself and could not therefore simultaneously wield the scorer's pencil and work the complex scoreboard mechanism) and a brief mooning episode by Mr Gilkes aside, The Gents were as good as gold, and Yoss was keen to renew in 2009, perhaps a three-way competition. From a logistical viewpoint, Gents were in fine fettle, with fourteen current and two prospective players on the ground. Sloane Club were, however, denuded of major batsmen, though Yoss assured your match reporter that such talent does indeed exist, it just needs organising around the club's shift patterns.

The match itself was something of a Gents/FC Chad throwback and was played with the rugged friendliness of spirit for which those encounters were memorable. For example, Richard Gilkes was reprieved after being caught by slip Donovan, as umpire Snelling did not realise that the batsman was not ready. Such was the heat that players took drinks breaks every ten overs, but even so 85 were bowled in the day.

The wicket was fast, true and bouncy and captain Buck inserted The Gents. Sloane Club did not bowl badly and took two sharp catches, including one by guest Mark Sciberras, but were powerless to stop rampaging stands of 73, 86, 40 and 76, with fifties for Ravi Inkollu, his first for the club and Nabeel Husain, 69 not out in ten overs, his fifteenth, excluding his four hundreds. Naveed Khan, Richard Gilkes and Ahsan Iqbal provided fine support.

Sloane Club, who did not charge Gents a penny for all this, provided a fine tea, along with a lavish supply of liquid refreshment. They faced up to their task with initial circumspection but were undone first by pace, then spin, Hemin Patel taking 3-3-0-3 as the innings stalled from 30/5 to 30 all out. No matter, as the sides were then mixed up for a nine a side Pro18 game in which everyone got to bat or bowl. The game was deemed unofficial, so no scorecard is recorded here. The UFO was spotted by Naveed Khan, Ken Toft and Andrew Burman, who vowed to send a letter to the Government's Flying Saucer Committee for urgent action. In case you are wondering about the headline, a piper in the hospital piped that old plantation melody (originally called Loving Lambs) and young Grace Buck was told by her dad that it was especially for her. This was in spirit with the best day out for a long, long time.