Brian Lara, the old diva, was late of course, arriving at 2.20 for a game that should have started at 2.00. But the match slouched around, in a hands-in-pockets sort of way, until he was ready, which he was at 2.45.
The wonder was that he had turned up at all, dashing from his Caribbean flight to the rather prosaic setting of the Parkwood Road playing fields, just outside Canterbury.
Here, David Folb, the owner of Lashings Cricket Club, had succeeded where the West Indies Cricket Board and Warwickshire County Cricket Club had occasionally failed. And everybody was ecstatic.
For here he was, the world's most gifted batsman, turning out for a pub side against the callow undergraduates of the University of Kent in a 40-over friendly.
Lara-watchers might see this as his nadir, the ultimate end for a player who has been in decline since, in the space of six weeks in 1994, he made the highest scores in Test (375) and first-class (501) cricket.
Folb does not see it that way. Folb sees himself as something of a missionary. And there are certainly some people who would like to indulge his fantasy by placing a pith helmet on his head, tying him up with a rope, and placing him in a large cooking pot.
Anxious to promote Lashings, his Tex Mex restaurant and sports bar in Kent, he is a successful businessman and an outstanding self-publicist whose entrepreneurial efforts this week prompted one newspaper to describe him as a hybrid of Don King and Del Boy Trotter.
Backed by Simon Noble, a multimillionaire businessman from Bristol who owns the internet betting company, Intertops.com in Antigua, and markets the controversial Rude Boy cricket bat used by Lara, Noble has brought a number of outstanding West Indian players to the club.
These include two other former captains Richie Richardson and Jimmy Adams, who both played yesterday. So did Jamie Theakston, the television and radio presenter.
While it is easy to dismiss yesterday's circus as nothing more than an advertising gimmick no one can deny that Folb and Noble have pulled off a remarkable coup.
"It's lots of fun for everybody," Folb grinned yesterday. "It's good to see young people coming to the game and seeing how exciting cricket can be."
Noble wants to go one better. "It would be nice to take on an England team. And I'm going to talk to the England and Wales Cricket Board this weekend about the possibility of playing in the Benson & Hedges Cup in the future.
"After all, the England A team took part in the Busta Cup in the West Indies last winter. Today was fantastic. It was like living a dream. Lara is the player I never was."
However, as cricket tries to clean up its image after the match-fixing scandal it would surely not welcome any association with a betting company.
A crowd of about 1,000 turned up to watch and Lara, who had been playing for West Indies just 48 hours before, certainly played his part.
He will be with Lashings until June 10 and will return at the end of the summer. Yesterday he was surrounded by heavies when he arrived but still had to pull a cricket case almost as big as himself.
"This will be fun cricket for me," he smiled wearily. Lashings insist they are not paying him but it is thought he is receiving a six-figure fee from Noble's company.
Lara, to his credit, took it seriously. He scrutinised nine deliveries before he got off the mark. Then he struck 77 from 58 balls out of Lashings' 260. He hit nine fours and a couple of sixes before he was caught and bowled by the actuarial studies student Vishal Agarwal.
Agarwal, a former Essex Youth player who bowls orthodox left-arm slow, said: "I got a bit of tap and he hit me for two sixes so I was delighted to get his wicket, especially as I had him dropped. It was a difficult catch and normally I can't catch a cold." Nor can clever moneymakers.