The seeds of defeat were sown with an unhurried batting performance as a decent Archives line-up, leavened with the youthful agility of O'Regan Mills – Eric Trump to the Director’s Donald – failed to get to grips with the enigmatic grassy wicket of Terenure College.

The Walnuts fielded well to be sure (save for the occasional easier run to be gleaned between backward point and third man where the field slopes prodigiously away to the boundary), but it was still unusual to see only three Archivers make it into double figures. Will (swiftly and elegantly) and the Director (painfully slowly and very fortunately) both retired, while Shylendra was well caught for 16 or so.

Bajpai was bowled early. Both Pickford and excellent debutant Cox flirted with double figures, but the last 7 batters mustered a single boundary between them (the only boundary among those 7 being hit by Lloyd Cox, preventing me – during this Olympic rowing season –  from making a joke about a Four-less Cox, instead of a Coxless Four).

In any event, 83 seemed an easy target. Unless we got off to a flying start.

Reader, we got off to a flying start.

Opener O’Neill made the cardinal error of running on a mis-field: O’Regan Mills, having tumbled and fumbled momentarily near the third man boundary, recovered to throw a stunning direct hit. Then Pickford clean bowled number 3. Terenure were 6 for 2 off two overs. This had the Director wondering if we should take the metaphorical foot off the throttle. Captain Russell was having none of this nonsense and the pressure was kept on and this – as events later demonstrated – was completely correct.

Although batters 1 and 4 retired, they were scoring slowly; certainly not much ahead of the rate and the Archives had bowling to come. One of the retired batters had an unexpected life when Will, fielding on the boundary, showed what 30 years out of the game can do to a chap, as a shot from Terenure’s Mehigan that seemed likely to be pouched turned, instead, into a six. It was the only one of Mehigan’s shots that went for more than a single run.

When Kinsella (who had an very odd looking stance) and Browne came together, we thought we had a chance. When Will sent the latter back without scoring, I started to dream of victory. But Kinsella-Of-The-Odd-Stance had different ideas: a left-handed tennis player he, the ball was effortlessly hoicked in a sort of double-handed backhand to the boundary between – and on two occasion over – deep square leg and deep midwicket, for a quick-fire 20 that took the game away, with poor Gordon Hill (I think) being the innocent victim of this punishment beating.

In truth though, the Archives bowled well to take the game deep, with Fletcher turning in a pair of tight overs, Shylendra working wonders at the death to give us some hope and Bajpai getting remarkable lift out of an otherwise lackadaisical pitch. In spite of one late run out, poor O'Regan Mills was dispatched over the boundary for the winning runs. There were 10-ish balls and two wickets to spare. Game, set and match to Terenure.

The always convivial post-match chat led to talk of trying to re-fix the early season reverse fixture that fell foul of DLR Health and Safety. It may yet happen. The Archives POTM was debutant Lloyd Cox and the Terenure laurels (like the ones on a certain brand of tennis shirt) went to Kinsella.

[Written by: Simon Mills]