Captain Vaughany stood on the bridge of HMS English Cricket and slowly shook his head. The once proud and mighty dreadnought was battered and scarred and hardly ever won any races any more.

His ship had been around for a while. It was built in 1877 and had once ruled the waves. Even when it got into trouble, previous captains like the Doctor or Captain Bodyline had been able to change the rules, to come out on top.

But that was in the old days. The boat had started to really deteriorate after Captain Dreary had taken over in 1977 and painted everything beige and installed shag-pile carpet – also in beige. From then on, being made captain of the ship was worse punishment than getting detention with Dolores Umbridge.

Back in 2005, it all changed. His boat had undergone a refit and had come out shiny, sleek and new. His new boat was so good that he swept aside the cocky antipodean raiders and left them shattered and bobbing in their wake. They had won back the magic urn and everyone thought that the new English Cricket could again rule the waves.

But it was not to be. Unbeknownst to Captain Vaughany, the refit had been done by British Leyland engineers who had been laid off in 1986 and underneath the shiny new paint, the rusting hulk of the old dreadnought was still the backbone of his new boat.

Other things started showing as not quite right. Although his boat had seven engines, they were all different. What’s worse, the big ones always seemed to break down or needed to go back to the county mechanics to be retuned.

Most of the engines were single-piston diesels like Johann and they just plodded along and never really changed their pace. Then there were the “special” engines that had helped them take the magic urn from the evil Aussies.

These two engines were the difference between winning and losing and they were completely different from the rest. One was called Freddie and he was very big and powerful, but he had a problem. Unusually for a boat engine, he was alcohol fuelled and, like all high-performance engines, he broke down a bit too often. He also secretly just wanted to be the engine in a Pedalo.

The other special engine was called KayPee. He was a very special engine; much loved by everyone but mainly by himself. KayPee was a very showy engine, painted with flames and bright colours. He was also the only outboard engine and secretly wished he had been attached to a different boat.

KayPee was very exciting, but only had one speed – which was very fast when he got going – but if he stalled, he was impossible to restart. He also had a rather wacky habit of changing sides of the boat without warning and it made their opponents very cranky.

The engines weren’t the only quirky things about the boat. The ship’s Bell was very temperamental. In calm seas he would ring at 199 decibels, but when he was really needed when it was rough, he wouldn’t make a sound.

The Cook, too, was a disappointment. Instead of giving them the winning edge, he just continually served up meat and potatoes, which is okay, but a bit of curry might be good every now and then.

The rudder, too, caused no end of problems. They had tried a lot of different sorts over the last few years to no avail. The Jones couldn’t catch and the Read wasn’t much better. These were replaced by the Nixon, which was so noisy it drove its own engines mad as well the opposition. They’ve since tried one called the Prior and now even an imported one called the Ambrose. They haven’t really helped.

As Captain Vaughany surveyed his ship, he knew it was now too old, too slow and was the laughing stock of the ICC’s boat club. The shiny new refit had fallen off when Freddie took the boat down to race against Captain Punter. Not only did he lose the races and break all the good bits off the boat, but he also had to give back the magic urn that they’d knicked the year before.

So Captain Vaughany got together with Admiral Miller to figure out what to do, but they were running out of ideas. They were even toying with bringing old engines Hoggy and Harmi out of mothballs, but they knew it was no use.

The best thing that could happen to the old barge is for it to sink without trace so that they could start again from scratch. And they may well get their wish very soon. Ruthless pirate Captain Smith and his evil Sith Ifrican crew on the SS Protea were already waiting for them on the water. The next race starts on Wednesday.