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Wivenhoe Town beat Exning by 8 wickets.

And so after fifteen summers spent at The Oval in South London watching Surrey County Cricket Club rise, fall and then rise (sort of) again, the plan was to become an Essex Boy and spend my summers down the road at Chelmsford.

But at a whopping £19 for a CB40 match, and a ridiculous £21 for a t20 match, like most things here in Wivenhoe, @AnnaJCowen and I decided to keep it local.

Which all means forking out an annual cost-cutting price of £10 for social membership of Wivenhoe Town Cricket Club, and then procrastinating (and boozing) the summer weekends away along Rectory Road.

Hurrah!

We were teased during the first week of the new season over the Easter weekend. Concerned that many within the town feel that I live my life online, I was warmed to see @Wtcccricket offering some superb live tweeting from the opening matches of the summer.

I’ll have some of that I thought, dragging myself away from MacBook on Saturday afternoon and cycling up to the cricket club for some online / offline interaction. Shame there was no WIFI in the outfield.

As ever, a fashionably, fashionably late arrival along Rectory Road meant that we missed the start. We actually missed the entire innings by Exning, the visitors to Wivenhoe for the day.

Whoops.

But tea interval is always a great time to announce your arrival. We were welcomed into the newly refurnished clubhouse, half-eyed up the splendid tea spread and then opted for the bar.

It wasn’t quite the Long Room Oval experience that we have dined out on for the past fifteen summers, but the booze was certainly kept better than the hit and miss bar back in South London.

There can be no finer early summer experience than taking up a position behind the boundary rope at a village cricket ground, pint of lager shandy in your hand and the umpires emerging from the pavilion.

Looking resplendent in their freshly pressed white overcoats, it was like a scene from a long lost Yellow Pages commercial, with added industrial strength lager.

There was slight concern that @AnnaJCowen and I had colonied the home team boundary bench. My own cricketing record still proudly reads: 0 runs, not out, having faced a solitary delivery during my own very brief batting days. But cometh the hour, cometh the crap cricketer, should the call up go out.

Chasing down 172 for the win, the home side were never in any real need for a half laced boundary boy. An outrageous six cleared the ground in the second over, soon followed by an equally outrageous lbw shout, which saw one of the Wivenhoe openers sheepishly wander back into the hutch shortly after.

“Well played, fella,” offered the encouragement of a cheeky young scamp loitering by the pavilion.

Whoops.

With a brisk estuary breeze blowing all the way up towards the top of the town, this was a day for your traditional chunky cricket jumper. Unfortunately I had made the extreme fashion faux pas of wearing a lycra cycling top.

We braved it out to see the Hoe slog away, ensured of a victory, before buggering off back to base for, um, gardening duties.

So yeah – you can stick £19 + train fare + booze bonanza of a day out at Chelmsford. A charming village cricket club, a well stocked bar and flirtations of walking out with the First XI are not as fanciful as they first seemed.

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