We lost the toss and were put into bat. Shelford's ground is lush & secluded and overlooked by tall trees on the side of a short boundary - lots of scope to lose balls. As always, Captain Prabhdeep Singh had a plan. On this surprisingly green wicket let's make sure we bat out our overs. Don't worry about run rate early on, let's wear down their opening bowlers and if we can get to 130 or 140 runs we will have a platform that we can successfully defend.

The thing is, plans rarely survive intact after the first encounter with reality .

The first planning problem was the opening Shelford attack. The opening pair (Fazel Lee and Stuart Creed) were precise and relentless, the ball swinging both ways. We soldiered on under intense fire until resistance gave. First, our captain was bowled by a Creed yorker. Then yours truly, prodding away to preserve the wicket, was clean bowled by a Fazel outswinger. It was time for young Nick Sanders to step up and build some backbone into our innings in partnership with Tom Smith. Both have eerily similar batting styles, tall, languid and disciplined, happy to wave through risky offside temptations and frustrate the Shelford bowlers with anything on the stumps.

The second planning issue was that the Shelford bowling stable turned out to be deep. Even after the openers had retired for a rest, Coton struggled to find opportunities to score runs off the seamers and spinners that followed. At the 20 over mark we had just 40-odd runs and we continued to donate cheap wickets to the Shelford cause. But it was the heavy hitting of Akul and Sampad that helped turn our fortunes a little. They took advantage of the short Cow Corner (a position at about 10 o'clock for the batter on strike) boundary to send the Shelford fielders searching in the rough for their fours and sixes. Akul ended with the high score of 33. This spell saw us build some kind of platform - 97 all out with Shaurya also contributing at 11 with a 4.

At the turn, Coton's confidence was low but Prabh got us fired up and our opening attack of Sampad, Saad and Prabh delivered, the Shelford wickets tumbling fast with Junaid and Akul also contributing. With each wicket taken, Sam loudly chalked it off the to-do list to keep us focused and Shelford under pressure. Tom Smith (wicketkeeper) and Lee Sanders both took fine catches off nicks.

Despite Shelford dispensing with wickets faster than us, they were also managing to out-score us. Their run-rate was 50% higher than ours. This made for a compelling conclusion as 2 lines on an imaginary graph converged; the track towards our target of all-out, and the track towards their run target. Which virtual line would win? As Shelford's fallen batsmen kept shouting from the boundary after their side reached 80, they only needed 1 run an over to win. A wide an over would do it.

And thus we came to the denouement with Shelford on 96-8, having just lost another wicket. Of course we felt it was lost. But then the Shelford no.10 having just been instructed very clearly by his batting partner to play it safe, had a rush of the red stuff and swung cross-bat at Akul's next offspin bowl. The ball arced towards what looked to be a match-winning 4. The only hope was Nick Sanders who was protecting that part of the pitch, but at least 10 yards away. Surely it was too far even for one as agile as Nick? But no - Nick sprinted across, long arms outstretched and swooped a stunning and unlikely catch. Coton went wild.

Suddenly, Shelford were 96-9 with their last batsman the injured Fazel, needing 1 to draw and 2 to win. Fazel had earlier dropped a skied catch opportunity onto his eye socket and was carrying a shiner which restricted his vision. Could we still steal the victory or was this a tease from the gods? For a moment there were 11 ardent believers, our fielders advancing uncomfortably close to the batters to exert maximum pressure and secure that catch or run-out. But instead of glory, the next ball was a messy, fumbled nick off Fazel's bat which fell just beyond our slips, allowing Shelford to run 2 and thus stumble across the winning target line with a final score of 98.

Prabh was right all along - 130 would have worked. It was a great game, even on the losing side, and Great Shelford were amazing hosts too.