It had to happen. You cant come to England for 17 games and not lose one to the rain.   Jumping in the cars after breakfast, the convoy heads off for the 70 minute trip to Eastnor with Stirling I-don't-believe-in-GPS Hamman in the lead car.   Our GPS tells us we should arrive at 12:08.   On the M5 and Stirling misses the exit. GPS recalculates and tells us our new ETA is 12:18.   Stirling misses the next exit as well and now the ETA is 12:25.  We finally leave the motorway and then Stirling decides we need to do a U-turn in some little country lane - poor old Panda driving the luggage van. We drive through Tewkesbury and everyone says Stirling will claim its a deliberate move to come this way. Its 12:40 before we actually arrive at the ground and Stirling is true to form. And of course, not one person believes him.

We finally get underway and are in the field first . We are playing the Hereford Over 50s and one of their openers looks like Michael Carberry and even has the same strange helmet. Col Cooke gets one to hit him flush on the toe in front of middle and Stirling - sharing the umpiring duties today with a local umpire - has the finger up like a shot.   The batsman trudges off very reluctantly and apparently spends the next six overs sitting in the sheds with his pads still on. But better is still to follow.

Panda is bowling to batsman by the name of Matt Whitbread. Matt has belted a few off Panda and then drops almost to ne knee in trying to slog him over mid-wicket.   He is hit right in front and once again Stirling's finger is raised - some would say even before the raucous appeal even started. It would be fair to say that the batsman disagreed with the decision and lets Stirling know about it. As well as telling Stirling that it hit him high on the thigh, he also lets fly with "you've just been waiting to do that, haven't you?" . The tirade of abuse continues and Stirling fires back with a few shots of his own. I don't remember Dickie Bird or even Billy Bowden ever coming back at a batsman like this.   Matt's batting partner - and of course, several Aussies - tell him that he should shut up and get off the ground.   A bat is heard to meet something solid once he gets back the dressing-room and a few minutes later he is seen walking around the perimeter of the ground to a little shed on the other side.   He is met there by the Carberry look-alike and the two of tem sit in there stewing for about 20 minutes. We name it the Sook Shed !

Crazy thing is all his team-mates thought he was plumb LBW and that the decision was correct. The next batsman in was said to have jumped straight out of his chair ready to bat as soon as the ball hit the pads.   The rest of the innings was fairly unremarkable. I fielded for the first 20 overs while Murray kept wickets and I then took over the gloves for the second half .   All was going well, I was keeping very well and then the rain set in.   We went off with the opposition 5/161 off 36 overs.   The rain set in and after a half hour or so the match was called off.

The ladies of the Eastnor club put on a wonderful dinner. I had roast skin-less chicken with vegetables (a nice change, since there haven't been a lot of vegetables consumed on this tour) and a nice cheesecake for dessert. During the speeches Matt Whitbread is the butt of many jokes and funny comments and he takes it well, apologising to Stirling and everyone else for his behaviour. He explains that normally a batsman out LBW comes off and gets sympathy from his team-mates but in his case he came off and everyone of them told him he was out.   The other thing that cracks us up is that he said although he said a few things on the field to Stirling that he shouldn't have, that Stirling's retorts and sledges were so much better than his.

Stirling once again thanks Malcolm for looking after him when he broke his finger here earlier in the tour and tells a story, mimicking Malcolm's very broad West Country accent.   One of the local characters finishes the evening off with a couple of bawdy jokes and involves everyone in a sea-shanty whose words we will never remember but the fun of the evening we will never forget.