Reflect on the 1990s, and a series of unforgettable images automatically spring to mind; the events which defined a generation. The fall of Communism in the Soviet Union; Nelson Mandela's release from Robben Island; the death of Diana, Princess of Wales; and, in 1995, the emergence of the St Anne's Allstars Invitational XI.

It is the latter in particular which will surely most intrigue historians of the future; a triumph for the human spirit; a testament to fin de siecle vision; the economic consequences of all the money put into the quiz machine.

The story begins at Oxford University - the cradle of British cultural and political leaders since medieval times: Peel, Gladstone, Shelley, Tolkien, Gyles Brandreth and Iron Maiden. It was there that a band of plucky undergraduates from St Anne's College were busy honing their skills on the Parks. Not on its famous first-class cricket ground, though, but on a patch of grass nearby, where we played four-a-side matches of unbelievably low quality.

Leading the way were three visionaries: Matt Butcher with his left-handed elegance and wily medium-pacers, Garreth Duncan with his unique brand of wrist-spin, and Maxie Allen with his...erm, well, we'll come back to that one. Twice or more a week we would round up as many others as we could find and trundle off to do impersonations of cricketers; the effect augmented by Matt's home-made stumps - a child-size set with dowel-rod extensions sellotaped to their tops. We were there because we loved playing cricket - in any form. We were there because no proper team - certainly not the college's - would have anything to do with us. We were there because we had absolutely no distractions in the form of girlfriends. But something was missing: opponents.

An idea began to form in our minds. Garreth, Matt and I all knew we were tactical and man-management geniuses, and each longed to lead a side out on to the field as captain proper. We'd just read Marcus Berkmann's seminal Rain Men - the story of a group of struggling Oxford cricketers who founded their own club. The excitment derived from losing matches to each other was wearing off. So why not form our own team so we could lose to everyone else as well?

And with this moment of epiphany, the St Anne's Allstars were born. Via a circuitous route, Garreth found some people to play against: an occasional side run by the unforgettable Adrian Marsden from Lady Margaret Hall - a boggle-eyed Marty Feldman lookalike who went to parties wearing 1920s tennis blazers and full cricket whites. A date was set and a venue found - Botley Park in west Oxford, where there was an astroturf wicket. In an early indicator of our organisational abilities, it was never booked; we just turned up and hoped no one else would be using it. Meanwhile we rallied our troops and recruited some helping hands - a star-studded line-up including such luminaries as Duncan Amey, John Peters, Richard O'Driscoll, Jasper Joffe, James Abrahams and Gavin Best. From our Osney headquarters we practised hard and plotted victory, pioneering our unique training regime of eating crisps and watching five daytime quiz shows every afternoon. At some stage, we may have had a net.

June 1995, and the day dawned for the first ever Allstars match. Sadly, the scoring records are now lost to us, but all those fortunate enough to be present agree that it constituted one of the most extraordinary games of cricket ever played. The LMH XI comprised two really quite good players, two reasonable ones, and a remainder who had never played the sport before in their lives. A couple were American and held their bats horizontally, baseball-style. They won the toss and batted first, their opening batsmen making good progress. I got involved nice and early by claiming the first of what is proving to be a record-setting series of dropped catches. But although we weren't terribly good, we got stuck in and tried our best - our efficiency only slightly compromised by both Matt and Garreth believing they were captain and simultaneously ordering the same fielder to different positions. Somehow, wickets came. The wildcard Gavin Best was actually proving rather handy and beat a couple of batsmen for pace. Matt and Duncan both chipped in to good effect and Adrian Marsden got himself stumped on purpose after reaching 50. Garreth took a wicket when he tossed one up high in the air, the batsman ducked, and the ball went clean over his head and landed on the bails. With another of his deliveries, he forgot to let go of the ball until his arm had gone full circle - ending up bowling it back through his legs to mid-off: an unforgettable moment for everyone who witnessed it. Just as memorably, I even took a wicket myself - a catch to the keeper off one of my classic extra-slow straight balls. With James Abrahams taking the final catch, we bowled them out for (I think) 158.

As would almost always prove to be the case in future, our inaugural innings was a patchy affair. In the first over Duncan hit a four and a six before running himself out. Richard O'Driscoll took a direct hit in the bollocks before, the very next ball, I gave him out LBW in one of the worst umpiring decisions in living memory. It soon became clear that the two best LMH batsmen were also their best bowlers: they were very good but the others were crap. Jasper and James helped Matt repair the damage, the latter sharing a half-century partnership. Matt himself reached 50; a feat in no way diminished by the fact that earlier a ball had passed through his stumps - but left the bails completely intact.

At the other end, wickets were falling at regular intervals - but we inched towards the target. With ten runs required for victory, our seventh wicket fell (in effect our eighth, as we were playing ten-a-side). This brought me to the crease. As the tension mounted to almost unbearable levels, I scraped a couple of singles and, more importantly, avoided getting out. Then, with four needed, I was on strike once more - and faced one of the all-time great pieces of death bowling: four wides. I raised both arms to the skies in triumph and ran off the field into the open arms of my team-mates. We had won!

After this heady experience we wanted more, and immediately arranged another Allstars match - this time against, ludicrously, the Regent's Park College first team. Fearing the worst, we roped in five decent ringers from other colleges (giving rise to the 'Invitational' element of our name), but it made little difference: we lost by 100 runs.

Over the next two or three years we were able to organise a couple of games a season, normally against other randomly composed teams captained by Adrian Marsden. These matches were played in a very informal style which usually degenerated into complete chaos. Few players had whites. The umpires were incompetent. There were never 22 players present at the same time, with people continually coming and going during the course of the match, which meant that everyone spent half their time fielding for the opposition. There were disputes and squabbles and infighting. We played awful cricket and suffered terrible mismatches. But we also had lots and lots of fun. And basic principles became established; our fixtures gave people - many of whom wouldn't be good enough to play anywhere else - the chance to play cricket and enjoy it, in a sociable environment where mistakes were forgiven and nothing was taken too seriously, and where beer and banter were of paramount importance.

Eventually, the time came for us all to leave Oxford, and the Allstars fell silent. As the years passed, other pursuits began to seem more important in our lives - jobs, partners, home-making; the veneer, at least, of adult maturity. Time went by and, in theory, we grew up. But something was missing in our lives. The thrill of taking the field for the start of play, the camaraderie, the piss-taking, the swearing, the Stella. Playing cricket itself. We could have joined a proper club, but that wouldn't be half as much fun. The nagging feeling grew, and by spring 2001 I decided to do something about it: to reform the Allstars!

This time around the personnel base would have to be broader - there simply weren't enough former Anne's students available to make up a team on a regular basis, but we had lots of other friends who fancied the idea of playing for a friendly cricket team. So the new club would be in effect a spiritual descendant of the old Allstars - based around the same concept and ethos, a nucleus of the original players, but inviting all our mates, work colleagues and anyone else we could find, to join in as well.

Garreth, Duncan, and other Anne's old boy Chris Gould quickly came on board, and later, Matt, James and others too. My old school friend Adam Clements pledged his services and quickly recruited his York University friends (including Kieron Dolphin, Jim Jarrett and Andy Dyer), plus Nick Jones, while I contributed my brothers and some of the guys from talkSPORT. From other Oxford colleges, we signed up Christchurch's Tom Morris to add some class with bat and ball, and Worcester's Tom Everest, who refused to play but volunteered to be our official scorer.

We also decided to organise ourselves a little more seriously than previously: we had nets, bought equipment and full whites, set up this website, designed a logo based on the Anne's college crest, and, courtesy of Andy Clarke's housemate, coined a Latin motto - Narrata Facimus et Conficimus. This roughly translates as 'we walk the walk and talk the talk', a phrase which narrowly edged out Dolphin's suggestion - 'worship the cock'. We were so proud of it we had it printed on our new match shirts, which to this day still also bear each player's name and squad number on the back.

I scrabbled around for opponents and eventually conjured up, through a number of contacts, am eccentric fixture list against a handful of village teams from around the country. The Allstars' second incarnation formally began on Bank Holiday Monday 28th May 2001, against South Muskham and Little Carlton CC in the obvious location of Newark, Nottinghamshire. Against all odds, it was a wonderful day. We bowled and fielded remarkably well to restrict them to 200-7 from 37.5 overs, and then only fell 22 runs short of actually winning - thanks mainly to Jonesy's explosive 66, which followed his earlier 3 wickets. For most people though, the truly memorable image was Dolphin returning to the pavilion with his bat raised in glory, after being bowled first ball. Afterwards we repaired to the village local for skittles, darts, a barbecue, heart-felt renditions of 'Kieron Dolphin's Illegitimate' and vast quantities of fruity bitter. I fell asleep pissed at King's Cross and lost all my possessions. We were hooked.

The remainder of that inaugural season progressed in ramshackle fashion. We recorded our first victory - against Marcus Berkmann's Rain Men, the side which had inspired us so much in the first place. We were hammered by a proper cricket club in Kent who racked up 261 from 26 overs before running me out when I fell over. We travelled to Haywards Heath and even Bradford, to play at a venue overlooked by the Yorkshire Ripper's old house. Generally, we weren't very good - reaching a nadir at the Barmy Army's Sixes Day, where both our teams lost every match.

Since then, we've gradually become more organised and found better-matched opponents a little closer to home. In 2002 we discovered the Gentlemen of West London - who've become firm allies and given us enormous help in developing our fixture list. But that year still saw some dreadful mismatches: 10 defeats from 14 outings, including losses by 137 runs against London Nigerians, 127 runs against St John's College, and 10 wickets against Datchet - although we did rescue things slightly with our famous victory against Trengilly Wartha in Cornwall.

2003 was our breakthrough season. We at last properly tapped into the West London social cricket scene and notched up an incredible 10 wins from 20 matches. Along the way new faces appeared: the inestimable Jason Nixon arrived with the Morse contingent of Dave Halladay, James Terrett and James Devlin; Big Gay Alex Williamson made his mark; Fats summoned Scratch and Roger from the Financial Services Authority; Mike Bovill became a stalwart and one day brought along a talented Australian called Chris Hipwell whom he'd met in the pub the afternoon before. Remarkably, he's still with us.

To most extents and purposes, the Allstars are now a properly established friendly cricket club. We have a bank account, an (albeit ersatz) committee, AGMS, awards dinners, a regular home ground, our famous range of merchandise and an annual tour. Playing, as we now do, most summer weekends, we've begun to play better and more efficient cricket. We look a little less foolish in the field. My captaincy, I'd like to think, is slightly less chaotic. Suicidal run-outs have become rarer, except when I'm batting. Depending on who turns out, somedays we're reasonable, somedays awful; on average we're roughly the standard of a moderate pub side.

But our fundamental ethos still obtains. The Allstars exist to give people of all abilities and backgrounds the opportunity to play enjoyable cricket in a social context. Selection is on the bases of enthusiasm and availability, not skill. We appreciate victories when they come, and try our hardest to compete, but strive to give all 11 players the chance to contribute with either bat or ball. Mistakes aren't begrudged. Our geographic focus is south west London but our members are drawn from far and wide and we arrange regular trips out from the capital. The core objective remains for everyone, on both teams, to have fun, and for our opponents to see us as reliable, self-effacing, sportsmanlike, and good value down the pub afterwards - one arena in which we surely hold our own. Beer, banter and bad averages - that's the Allstars way.

Maxie Allen