Absolutely right, Aditya.

On more than one occasion in those fixtures Charley The Gent (and/or I) “departed without troubling the scorers” in the manner of that inappropriate euphemism.

But on two occasions at least Charley really did depart without troubling the scorers. For both the 2005 and 2006 fixtures Charley managed to pick up an injury just ahead of the match, so ended up attending but acting as a sort-of coach or non-playing captain. On those occasions he really didn’t trouble the scorers.

And on one occasion Charley’s boss, Lofty, attending merely as a spectator (despite having the height and build of a big fast bowler), troubled the scorer a great deal by interfering with his good work and suggesting that he might have recorded matters wrongly when he had, in fact, recorded them correctly. Given that Lofty, while highly numerate, self-confessedly knows nothing about cricket, Barmy Jez is not only a cricket nut but also has a first in maths and was, in real life at that time, one of my operational research statistics whizzes.

In could go on about the phrase “troubling the scorers”…oh, I just have gone on about it.

But the scorer had to, at the very least, mark Ged’s wicket falling on that particular ball, put a score (0) up against Ged’s name, put one into the wickets column for “Phil”, mark the manner of the dismissal, and who knows what else.

That feels like a fair bit of trouble to go through to mark someone out for a first ball duck.

I still shudder when I drive past that Perivale ground.

To add insult to injury that day, something bit me when I was fielding, which resulted in a ghastly poisoned leg wound that seemed to take forever to clear up. It must have been a stray tropical insect, not native to the Queen of Suburbs. I don’t think the Duchess got close enough to me physically that day to extract life blood in the legendary manner.