What a bumper crop of landmarks Binfield has served up this season, my dear old things — nine of them, from Nathan Warwick's 200th wicket and Chris Morgan sailing beyond seven and a half thousand runs, right down to a first 500 and a proud 50th cap. Let us take them one by one, teacup duly raised.

Chris Morgan7,500 career runsMatt Hayman250th appearanceThomas Williams2,000 career runsNathan Warwick200th wicketSebastian Atkins100th wicketJMJames Muir500 career runsVikram Duraiswamy500 career runsECElliot Coggins50th wicketMonika Nicholls50th appearance

Now, I do love a milestone. There is something wonderfully reassuring about a number with a nice round look to it, and this season the Binfield cricketers have served them up like cucumber sandwiches at tea. But the real joy, my dear old things, is not merely that these landmarks have been reached — it is where they place a fellow in the great sweep of the club's history. So do come and stand with me by the honours board while a pigeon of considerable self-importance conducts his own inspection of the square.

Chris Morgan

7,500 career runs

★8th all-time run-scorer

Career275matches·7,522runs·68wickets·20maidens

Pride of place, and quite rightly, goes to Chris Morgan, who has waltzed serenely past 7,500 career runs — 341 of them gathered this very summer. That is not merely a handsome number; it makes him the 8th-highest run-scorer in the whole history of Binfield Cricket Club. Eighth! Out of six hundred and fifty-nine souls who have ever taken guard in these colours. A feat to be saluted with the very largest slice of the tea-room sponge.

Matt Hayman

250th appearance

★26th most-capped

Career250matches·1,356runs·382wickets·399maidens

Matt Hayman, meanwhile, has turned out for his 250th match — a quarter of a thousand appearances, every one earned in whites and mud — which places him 26th on the club's all-time list of most-capped players. To have pulled on the Binfield sweater more often than all but twenty-five men in the club's history is a marvellous kind of loyalty, and precisely the sort of thing that keeps a cricket club standing.

Thomas Williams

2,000 career runs

★57th all-time run-scorer

Career140matches·2,001runs·154wickets·47maidens

Thomas Williams has trotted calmly past 2,000 career runs, a landmark that lifts him to 57th among all the run-makers Binfield has ever fielded — comfortably inside the top sixty, and with, one suspects, a good deal more to come. The bus, my dear old things, has plainly some distance still to travel.

Nathan Warwick

200th wicket

★24th all-time wicket-taker

Career142matches·254runs·200wickets·70maidens

And what of the bowlers? Nathan Warwick has brought up his 200th wicket for the club — fourteen of them this season alone — a number so round and satisfied that it deserves a lap of the square. Two hundred wickets makes him the 24th-most prolific wicket-taker in Binfield's entire history; a lifetime of trudging back to the mark and running in again, and every last one of them cheered to the echo.

Sebastian Atkins

100th wicket

★49th all-time wicket-taker

Career132matches·1,190runs·100wickets·59maidens

Sebastian Atkins joins the century club, claiming his 100th career wicket and taking his place as the 49th-highest wicket-taker the club has known. A hundred of anything is a splendid thing, and a hundred wickets — inside the all-time top fifty bowlers — is a landmark to raise a teacup to.

Now here is a story to warm the coldest pavilion. James Muir has brought up his 500th run for Binfield — and every single one of those 518 runs was struck this very season. A whole first five hundred in one glorious summer, my dear old things; a debut of the most agreeable sort, and surely the mere prologue to a long and handsome innings in these colours.

Vikram Duraiswamy

500 career runs

★149th all-time run-scorer

Career25matches·521runs·2wickets

Vikram Duraiswamy has likewise sailed past the 500-run mark, adding 237 this season to raise the landmark in fine style. Another name climbing the club's all-time list, and another most welcome addition to the honours board.

Elliot Coggins has picked up his 50th career wicket — fifteen of them this season, a fellow plainly in a hurry — a half-century of scalps and the surest sign of a bowler just getting into his stride.

Monika Nicholls

50th appearance

★153rd most-capped

Career50matches·211runs·1wicket

And a landmark to applaud most warmly of all: Monika Nicholls has made her 50th appearance for the club. Fifty matches is a wonderful commitment in anyone's book, and a splendid one for Binfield's women's cricket — the sort of steadfast turning-out, season after season, that a club is quite simply built upon. Bravo, and a raised teacup from the commentary box.

It is, my dear old things, a marvellous thing to watch a club pile up its little landmarks — the eighth-highest scorer here, the two-hundredth wicket there, a proud first five hundred and a fiftieth cap besides. Somewhere a red double-decker bus is trundling past the ground, quite oblivious to all this glory, and long may Binfield keep filling this honours board. What a club, and what a summer.