Scoring the Allstars places an unusual set of demands on the scorer. After a season-and-a-half, I've got used to many of the usual features of the St Anne's game: the nine ball over; the middle order collapse; and Tristan's endless use of dot balls (fortunately, as a bowler as well as a batsman). I'm accustomed to the conversation with the other team's scorer when we bowl our first five-run delivery (a wide which runs to the boundary, for example) and the discussion we have about how to mark that in the book. (It's a plus with a dot in each quadrant.) I look forward to my fortnightly chat with the non-batting members of our opposition about whether that ball which was looking to pitch just behind the wicket-keeper was a no-ball or a wide. I know the twenty-four run over bowled by one of our bowlers like an old friend.

What I wasn't prepared for, though, was the tour. In fact, there were two things about the tour for which none of us could have prepared and on which none of us would have bet.

Picture the scene. Night is gathering in, the clouds are brewing over a field in south Cornwall. Penryn Community College looks down over the wicket with all the menace its sixties architecture affords. As the scorer reaches for his waterproof jacket, the first change bowler starts his run up. Little did either realise that this was to be the first ball in a famous over.

Clem - fresh from his expansive outburst in the previous match (where, after many overs drilling away, a wicket was greeted with the phrase, 'fucking have some of that') - bowled a perfect three dot balls to open his spell. It's the first time this season that he's managed that trick - in every other spell, there has been at least a run off his first three balls. As the rain begins, the first wicket comes for Clem. Dot-dot-dot-W; a rare sight in the scorebook. The next ball, another wicket. Alan, the skipper for the oppo, turns to find out if the bowler really is on for a hat-trick. One scorer isn't sure; the Allstars, though, know that this has the hallmark of a champagne moment. Pounding in, and Clem has another wicket. His short arms rise triumphantly.

The book is sodden; I could really do without having to fill in the eight boxes required for another wicket. I'm cursing myself for having relied on one of Mr Biro's pens, rather than having brought a waterproof ink number. Non-scorers might not appreciate the sheer hell that a wicket brings on: the scorer is required to ascertain which batsman was out (not always that easy), who was bowling (easier), who caught it (near impossible) and make a quick addition to get the incoming batsman's score. Times have to be entered - for moment out and start of the next man's innings; the fall of wicket has to be recorded, along with the partnership (in runs, balls and minutes); and the bowler's figures must be adjusted. And then on strides the new man and the scorer is thrown into spasms of confusion while he tries to get a handle on the incoming batsman's name and any distinguishing characteristics.

All of that's fine when, typically during the opposition's innings, wickets come fairly slowly. Find yourself in the middle of an Allstars collapse and you could be seriously sorry you volunteered to drive the book. But to do that three times on successive balls? Nightmare.

Worse than a hat-trick is a high scoring batsman. The maths becomes a guess and subject to a secret compact between the scorers, with both adjusting the scores to get something that seems to agree. A fast scoring, high scoring batsman is still worse - you don't even get the acres of dots to do some thinking or to count slowly on your fingers. From the scorer's point of view, a turgid 13 is better than a quick 67 - and our second match provided both of these.

Fat Andy (one of only two Allstars to take his soubriquet into the scorebook, the other being Dirty Jim) hammered out a solid thirteen in the game against Trengilly Wartha, taking fifty balls and forty-nine minutes to work at his innings. On only one occasion did a run follow another, where Fats hit a pair followed by a four. In fact, it took him thirty balls to make it up to three. Nice work; giving the scorer much needed breathing time in the baking, glorious Cornwall heat.

Moz, on the other hand, had clearly got other things on his mind. Perhaps it was the fall-out of the night before at a wedding in Bristol which had given him the desire to get back into the shade as quickly as possible; perhaps it was the ignominy of being asked to bat at six. Either way, he didn't hang around - much to the excitement of his fellow team members and the perspiration of the scorer - cruising to his fifty in forty-five balls, thus becoming the equal fastest half-centurion this season. Succumbing to the bowling of MacKay for 67, Moz tapped away at fifty-five balls (only five more than Fats), clearing twelve of them to the boundary. He lasted forty-eight minutes.

The scorebook is unusually neat for Trengilly Wartha; something which I had as a thing of great pleasure, as I had visions of it being copied and framed for the hallway in St Anne's HQ. That was until Maxie, in conversation with the opposition, noticed that the bowlers were missing their first names. (They had initials, of course, just not full names.) The book then became covered in scrawl, as Maxie made the best of his limited handwriting ability attempting to write down the names in unsullied parts of the scorebook. I fear that now some evenings are going to be spent copying this page out again, free from the Haddow-Allen annotations. Such are the demands on a scorer.