The sun wasn't shining particularly brightly on HoF's recent run of results, but as the opening pair of Richardson and Whiting traipsed warily out to the middle there was faint hope under the parasols in front of the pavilion that this could be a turning point in the season. Previous match centurion Whiting got a faint snick in the first over and made his way despondently back to the bosom of his expectant family, and when AP arrived at the crease hopes were still high. Runs however were difficult to come by and none of the HoF batsmen could seem to take control against a middle-to-slow paced Claygate attack and wickets fell regularly with only Richardson and Extras putting up much of a fight at the 30-over mark. The HoF onlookers wistfully longed for another Extras to get themselves in, but in the end it was the old hand Wood who stoutly withstood the wily old Claygate leg spinner until he was last man out, undone by the wily-one's half tracker. So HoF's struggling to reach 150 again, and the bowlers anxiously awaited their fate.

Tea was taken with many experienced campaigners remarking that they had never seen it's like before; Wood was seen tucking into a healthy plate of chicken & chips, Smith seemed to be enjoying something that looked like a chicken korma, whilst Mo Siddiqui resisted all except a nice piece of carrot cake. So, the Headley opening attack were fed and ready, and as Hobbs marked out his run-up the aforementioned black tarpaulin-like cloud arrived and it absolutely pi..ed down. After five minutes the square was under water and the outfield saturated, and then the biggest freak of nature your reporter has ever seen happened - HAILSTONES in June. Hailstones bucketed out of the sky in their thousands, the size of marbles, and soon the whole ground was white with them. It was a truly amazing sight, and even Claygate's "Jungle Boy's dad" lookalike groundsman was at a loss at what to do until he had the bright idea of getting on his motorised roller and rolling the adjacent strip - a truly amazing piece of decision-taking.

Astonishingly enough, after about an hour the ground had dried sufficiently for Claygate to start their innings and they looked supremely confident of overtaking HoF's paltry looking total right from the gun. Although Mo bowled well enough and took an early wicket with an unusual straight one, Claygate steadily progressed towards their winning total with little that the 10-man HoF team could do to arrest the flow. As usual HoF made things doubly impossible for themselves when Mo left the field unexpectedly to attend to an airport pick-up halfway through the innings, but in all fairness HoF's were well beaten both with the bat and the ball, and go into the second half of the season in Division Three's basement position.

Things can only get better - or can they? Did the messenger get through, and when will the cavalry appear? Hark, do I hear the faint sound of bugles ………?