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iain o’brien
Iain O’Brien’s ‘compression tights’
By Will 2 years ago, mid-December, 1 Comment »
The modern cricketer, eh? Iain O’Brien’s latest post is rather enjoyable, not least to garner the thoughts of someone who’s just taken six wickets on debut. Oh, and to realise what compression tights are, of course.
1 Comment »I wore my compression tights to bed last night, these aid in recovery, and I wore them out onto the field too. It just keeps the muscles warm and ready to go. Warmed up well, felt strong and had a good rhythm to my warm-up deliveries before the start of play.
Dan told me, early, that I was going to be starting up and asked me which end I wanted. I wasn’t really bothered; whatever fitted in with the other guy the best is how I usually approach this subject. Maybe I should be a little more demanding in future, as I got the end I really wanted as Dan was going to bowl from the other end. With a tail wind coming over my right shoulder, I couldn’t ask for a better breeze.
Iain O’Brien’s blog
By Will 2 years ago, at the start of December, 3 Comments »
This is a good read, an encouraging sign and exactly what a blog should be. Iain O’Brien has been penning his thoughts. It’s a standard blog, and has clearly not been ghosted or filtered by humourless media people. For how long? Well, who knows? Before long Iain will probably let something slip, or call someone a galloping plonker, and all hell will break loose. That would be a shame.
So, enjoy it while you can. It’s even full of spelling mistakes; when those dry up you’ll know it’s been scanned by the dull police.
The crowds here are pretty good, ruined by a few, actually quite a few, idiots who think a day out at the cricket is just to abuse the guys playing any way how. You get called anything and everything. Embarrassing for these guys really, as a lot of the others around them are cringing. I don’t know how many times I’ve was called a ‘fagot’ this afternoon!
Tom came back on for one of those ’special’ spells. He had real energy and great direction. Symonds with a bouncer and then trapping Watson in front. And that’s six down. We’re in as good a position as we could possibly be in. It’s a pretty happy changing room and we sit down after doing our hot colds etc to discuss tomorrows task. We sign off on what we, personally, are going to do to win this Test. The track is only getting better and better to bat on, we can chase down 250-300, if we do it properly. And we have just done this, two Tests ago, on a tough track on day five. We’re a hell of a bet!
And…
Tonight I had to do the press. Firstly an on field chat to the ‘radio’ guys, then off to do the press conference. A table for one in front of the sponsors board, lights in your eyes, 15 odd microphones and recorders in front of me and about 15 media ready to ask their questions. It went pretty well, as intimidating as it is, I think I went ok. Even got to answer questions about yesterdays on field stuff with Ponting. It was also nice to know ‘the media’ had been reading my blog too. Hi all! Well, I already knew that after the big deal over nothing was made of the Gabba crowd comments.
It works well because he’s not trying to be anything other than a bowler playing for his country. There’s no attempt to be an aspiring novelist (“The ground was packed. The atmosphere ready. The cloudless skies portrayed” etc etc); he is plain, simple, brilliantly honest and it makes for a good and enlightening read. I thought our county bloggers this season (Will Smith, Nick Compton and James Foster) did just as good a job. It is inevitable that you’ll end up with the occasional glib piece, but not often.
More, please!
3 Comments »