The Bloody Lads cricket team talks brotherhood – and how to lose in style.

It is a blazing Sunday in June in Victoria Park, east London, and the Bloody Lads Cricket Club is doing what it does best: talking about the Bloody Lads Cricket Club.

“I came up with the name from that table,” says Mr Henry Lloyd-Hughes, an actor, holding court on a picnic bench in the People’s Park Tavern and gesturing towards a long table that is occupied by a boisterous 30th birthday party. “It’s just an irreverent way of describing a group of people randomly thrown together. If you were searching for a phrase and you didn’t know what the accurate way of describing a group of people was…”

“A gaggle of…” assists the amiable Mr Minesh Patel, a financier.

“That group of…” says Mr Jack Ensor, a loquacious Kiwi finance consultant.

“Bloody Lads,” says Mr Lloyd-Hughes.

Don’t think about it too hard and it almost makes sense. No matter. They’re on to the next thing, frantic, chattering, unruly and brimming with vitality, they are a very unusual group of cricketers.

The Bloody Lads Cricket Club was founded by Mr Joe Ridout, a filmmaker, and Mr Lloyd-Hughes, whom you will recognise from turns in Anna Karenina, Indian Summers and as the demonic Mark Donovan in The Inbetweeners. It now has 160 members with a core of 40. The BLCC is nonetheless still very much open to anyone who fancies pitching up, which is one of the things, but by no means the only thing, that makes it unusual.