On a hot Sunday afternoon in June, the team at Grace’s, the UK’s first LGBT cricket club, played a squad from Merton, Wimbledon.
Asad comes click-clacking up the narrow wooden staircase in his spikes and pulls on a helmet that turns out not to be his – he can’t get the chin strap done up. “Do I really need a helmet out there?” he asks, nodding towards the field, framed by the dormer window in a hot and airless changing room. Team-mate Stuart’s response is immediate and firm: “Definitely.”