Iain O'Brien's Cricket Blog

Test matches, I just love them. I am really excited heading into this series. We’ve had a couple of good days here in Hamilton building into this first one, training hard out on the park with our fielding drills and then into the nets going hard to prepare for the change from white ball back to red. It’s not the just ball that changes but the whole attitude. There is a different atmosphere in the nets, a little more relaxed; probably because there aren’t as many balls pinging around like when we’re training for One Dayers and T20’s.

It’s been a while, right... Well, here it is, here’s the last two of the five match One Day Series.

Hamilton’s weather was like the rest of the country when the NZ cricket team arrives; showery! The rain has plagued us the whole summer but mostly in the One Day series’.

Wow, last night was fun, if you were in the crowd that is; that’s value for money for the paying public!

I know you’ve become used to my reasonable level of quickness to get these blogs written and posted; sometimes though it’s just not possible.

Ouch, that hurt. We got pumped yesterday, we weren’t good enough and we felt the full strength and abilities of the Indian team.

Two - nil; who’d a thought. I can honestly say that going into this T20, two match series, that I didn’t think it’d be like that. I had a chat to Dan last night after the match, “Dan, how cool is this? Two nil, you thought we could win it two nil?” Even he thought it’d probably be a ‘one all’ series draw. We sat back and enjoyed the great feeling around the changing room.

Winning is an amazing feeling and it's not necessarily something we've done enough of in the last 12 months. Last night was amazing. Last night we won. Not going to get carried away, but it was a great feeling beating the World Champion T20 team.

Last time I sat to type we were 2-2 in a 5 match series against the Aussies; that's a while ago now. No apologies, I've just been really busy. The series stayed level after a wash out in Brisbane, a match I think we would have won seven out of ten times from that position. The T20 a couple of days later we lost, too many dot balls marred our batting innings from a position of strength to one of desperation.

So we head to Brisbane with the series drawn at 2-2.  Tuesday night’s loss had turned this series into a real nail bitter. 

It was another typical belter at Adelaide, a ground known for its great batting decks, this one, no different.  Dan won the toss and we wanted to bat first, so we did. 

No big party last night, alas.

• By Iain OBrien at 02/09/2009 - 21:58
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