And then, at the last minute, there was Old Estonians.

I thought I had given up playing regular cricket when I moved to London three years ago. Spending ten hours each weekend stood in a field having spent a preceding spell of 40 sat in a chair in an office suddenly didn't seem like the most efficient use of my free time. Each summer I'd play one friendly T20 game with work, and the overwhelming desire to spend an afternoon patiently dead-batting delivery after delivery back to a set of increasingly frustrated bowlers would start to rise within me, but I always managed to supress it. "You'll never find a team as good as the one you left", I'd think. "You won't be able to play every weekend, no one wants a player who can only make one week in three", I'd reason. I debated until I could debate no longer. I decided to take the hit. I decided to set up a cricket team. Old Estonians was born.

I was introduced to the concept of Last Man Stands by Dan Jones (Dan on Twitter), part time cricket film-maker, full time right arm chinaman. The concept is simple: you know how 5-a-side has done wonders for people unable to play Saturday football? Let's do the same thing for cricket. 20 overs. 8-a-side. On a weeknight. Perfect. I got in touch with the organiser and booked a slot in the Regents Park league; Tuesday Nights. Brilliant! Regular cricket! Then came the hitch. Where am I going to find enough people to make this anything more than a very expensive mistake?

Without the time to organise a multi-million pound auction to rival the IPL, and having been forcibly removed, placards and all, from outside the houses of several county cricketers ("Ramps! Ramps! It's on a Tuesday night Ramps! Call me!"), eventually through a combination of new friends, old friends, friends of friends, people approaching me in train stations while I'm lugging my cricket bag up some stairs (really) and a bit of quite sophisticated emotional blackmail, I scraped together enough people to loosely refer to them as a "team".

We've had some nets (two). We've been to the pub and know each others names. We (just about) know the rules. Our first game is tomorrow night. I'm going upstairs to practise my dilscoop. I may be some time.