Took the risk and it paid off © Getty Images

What a great feeling it is to be back playing after so many net sessions.

During the World Twenty20 I think I netted every day bar two; one because my back was tight and the other was a day off. Netting is fine when you get to go out and put it into play. Netting is very hard work when you want to play, but can’t get selected. It felt like that after my six balls against Scotland.

I got to play yesterday for Leicestershire over in Liverpool against Lancashire. I had one net with the Leicester lads on Friday; I got in and bowled hard for around 40 minutes. I felt good and knew I didn’t need much more before playing yesterday. I also wanted to spend some time away from cricket, so I cleared it with our coach, Tim Boon, so that I could miss Saturday’s net session and have the weekend off. Ended up being a very good weekend away with the wife and got to see some amazing animals at the West Midland Safari Park, well worth a visit (loved the Cheetahs!).

I made sure I got to the ground early so that I could do a bit of extra bowling before we started warm-ups proper. Just on the side of the block I got into some work, testing out the body, working on part of my load up and getting into the grove. I warmed up really well here and got to full pace pretty quickly, thanks also to a lovely day in Liverpool.

It had been rumoured last week that it was going to be a sell-out – it was for real. At a really lovely ground, Aigburth, Liverpool, with loads of temporary seating set up it wasn’t long till I couldn’t see a spare seat. Well, that’s a bit of a fib as the queues to the beer tent were massive. It was going to be a fun afternoon with an excited and expectant crowd.

We won the toss and batted first. No real reason, it just looked a good deck and we wanted to bat first. We got off to a great start, 66 for the first wicket; some real good hitting from Jimmy Allenby set us on our way to a possible score of around 160. His form in this competition has been brilliant. We didn’t get to 160 though, after being 96-1 in the 12th we didn’t kick on to what would have been, on the deck, a very competitive score. Lancashire bowled well in the second half of their bowling effort and pulled us back to just 146; the unfortunate thing though, for them, was that it showed us how to bowl on the surface. It was a tough deck to score rapidly on if you bowled in a very containing manner, as opposed to bowling good lengths in the theory that good bowling and wickets will stop the runs. This was one thing I had learnt from Kyle Mills during the World Twenty20; stopping them scoring the big runs will often bring the wickets anyway.

I bowled the third over and it didn’t start quite as I hoped; second ball sailed clean over the midwicket boundary. I went straight into damage control for the over - get the guy hitting the runs off strike, Croft in this case - and bowl to the other guy and try to limit the blow to as few more runs as possible. It worked and I also picked up a wicket with a ball I held cross-seam that just bounced a little more than it would have normally, an easy catch to midwicket. I wouldn’t say I felt amazing, but it felt good to be back out playing and doing the things I had been practicing so much.

My next over was better, apart from my first ball. It didn’t have enough on it in terms of energy and it went back past me at a rate of knots off Flintoff’s bat. I stuck a leg, and kind of a hand out and unfortunately, or fortunately for me, I didn’t get anything on it. The next ball, another cross-seamer, and with a bit more behind it, picked up our second wicket and an important one for us if we were to defend this total.

New batter and I went to length first ball, left alone, a slower ball same length next, defended to the off side. My third ball was an effort ball which I was aiming for length hoping to squeeze out another dot. This one kicked really nicely off a length and grabbed an edge through to Niko behind the stumps. A ball that I wish would come out more often, one of those where you’re just happy that you bowled it and not having to face it.

I bowled one more over in the spell, my third and last ball - a short one that I was planning for a dot was pulled out to square leg and taken by White. That was the set Croft gone - 58 for 4 and we were sitting in a good position but it wasn’t over yet.

Laxman and Chilton, the fifth-wicket partnership, dragged Lancashire back into the match and if they had won, this fight would have been where the game changed. Our catching had been great but our ground fielding hadn’t, and in this stand we let at least three balls get to the fence that should have been stopped.

Our catching stayed fantastic, Dips taking a great catch to remove VVS and breaking that partnership.

We bowled well through the middle with Claude and White going for just five runs each off their fourth and third overs respectively, and picking up two and one a piece.

This left 32 off three and I had one of those overs to bowl. Nine off the 18th and I came on with 23 from two with three wickets in hand. My over went for six and I picked up my fifth wicket, my best haul in a Twenty20 game, one pretty happy boy!

Seventeen off the last and a six off the first ball is not what you want. AJ had his first wicket next ball though, with White’s third catch, at long-on. Anything could still happen here, it only takes one big shot, one edge, to turn things on its head. A dot ball then a two which could have been a run out had my throw hit from long on. Nine off two and as long as this one doesn’t go to the fence we should be fine. It comes to me at long-on and I’m in two minds; run in hard for the catch and finish the match while taking the risk of making a mess and conceding more runs, or take it on the bounce and keep them to one, knowing they can’t score eight off one ball. I took the catch, comfortably in the end and finished it. A very good win for us and it sets up a good week of Twenty20 cricket when we play tomorrow at Trent Bridge.

Get updates on when I put a blog up by adding me on ‘twitter’. iainobrien is who you need to search for. You’ll get other little tidbits on what I’m up to there too....

Hi all,

Just a quick one, in fact a very quick one, to let you know about when I do an update; I have started a 'twitter' page, "iainobrien”, that will let you know when I add something here.

And thanks for the messages since we were knocked out of the World Twenty20. Appreciate them.

I head off to Liverpool tomorrow for my first match back with Leicestershire, it’s a Twenty20 match. I haven’t played for a while so am a little nervous about getting back into it properly. I’ve certainly done enough net work to feel good, but it’s always different when you get out in the middle. Either way, I’m looking forward to showing where my form is at and the things I learnt while training and watching so many great bowlers bowl during the competition.

On Thursday I got myself to Trent Bridge to watch our women’s team take on India in their semi-final. They made pretty easy work of it and I really enjoyed the afternoon. There are a few of the Wellington Blaze girls out there playing and it was great to see them in action on the big stage and perform so well.

I stuck around for the next match, just a small issue of Pakistan beating South Africa in a match which I thought would go the other way. That has been the nature of this tournament really - you just can’t pick a winner in any of these games. And for this fact I think it will always be a well-supported form of cricket.

Catch me back in a couple of days, and look me up on ‘twitter’ to get updates for here.

	All over, game over, we never took our chances didn’t do things as good as we can © Associated Press

Right then, where to start.....

Firstly, I know it’s been a while since my last post, again, so apologies for that. The timing of the games and travel has been hard work and with the extra training I’ve put in, it’s been hard to work in actually time off and then find some time to put in a good effort with this. I could have done some lazy posting, but that’s not what I’m trying to achieve. So, over the next couple of days I’ll get a couple more posts in covering off some of our performances.

Secondly I’m one very disappointed boy. We’re out of the biggest thing in cricket (the ICC World Twenty20) I’ve been a part of. It was an honour and a privilege to be a part of it but in the chance I got to play I got it wrong and then didn’t get a look in from there. I’ll talk about that in a bit.

I’m now currently on a train heading to Leicester to meet up with the ‘Foxes’ and sort a few things there for the rest of the time I will be with them this season. It’s a real (excuse me) shit feeling packing up, checking out of the hotel and not getting on the team bus to head off for the rest of the tournament. A real empty feeling that I know will linger for quite a while; sure I am heading back home, my ‘over here’ home, to my wife, to my bed, to my couch and that’s all great, but the chance to become a World Champion has eluded me, again. Again!? Yeah, again! I have three silver medals in a box in my brother’s attic back in New Zealand from three Indoor Cricket World Cups. I played in two of the three finals and we were only good enough for second all three times, losing to the Australian team each time. This was maybe my last real chance to finally be a World Champion, to call myself a World Champion, to make history, and do something amazing. It’s gone, all gone.

The preparation, the time and effort, the sweat, the sore body, the gym sessions before and during, the fitness tests, the physio sessions, the massages that hurt, the warm ups, the ice baths, the lonely times, the boring bus trips; all the things that went into this campaign that I hated doing at the time, but right now, once you’re knocked out without the rewards that you feel like you’ve worked to deserve, I would swap almost anything to be doing them right now.

I can honestly say that I came into this competition feeling great. My head space was amazing; which if you’ve followed this blog for a while will know takes some work for me. I actually came into this World Twenty20 feeling and thinking I could come out of it as one of the best performing bowlers in the world; not necessarily the leading wicket-taker, but certainly with a great economy rate, being able to do the role especially at the death. My lead in hadn’t been perfect with 10 days off because of a rib blow I got while batting for Leicestershire, but I had just enough time to get some good net time and a match for Leicestershire before joining the training camp. This 10-day layoff might have been a little bit of a blessing in disguise as I really felt great physically heading into the tournament, no niggles, no tired body; I was fresh and felt like a little kid at Christmas in the game I played for the Foxes.

Our match yesterday, in essence, was a quarter-final for both us and Sri Lanka; whoever wins goes through to the semi-final. We had our team meeting and scouting session in the morning before heading to Trent Bridge. We went through the Sri Lankan batting line-up and bowling attack one by one using video footage and supporting notes prepared by our video analyst, Zach. Dan [Vettori] leads this meeting with input from us all if we agree or disagree with a plan to a certain batter or bowler; once we agree we move on to the next adjusting the notes if need be. I take with me onto the park, when I’m playing, shortened versions of these notes. My memory isn’t the best and so the easiest way to make sure I have the plan right is to take notes to refer to before bowling. As the new batter walks out I dive into my pocket, look at my notes and make sure I know what the plan is for either my bowling or the others, as this reminds me of what they will be trying to do and I can then get myself into the best place for me to field. I had been making these notes but they had been staying in my bag for most of this tournament, as I hadn’t been playing.

The boys held Sri Lanka to 158; a target we could certainly reach, if we got the chase right. It’s probably fair to say the track fancied them rather than us with their mixture of slower bowlers. As we predicted in our team meeting, Sanath Jayasuriya opened the bowling with the second over; he was going to be one of the bowlers that we were going to target and we couldn’t have got off to a better start. Singles off the first two balls and then Redders [Redmond] cashes in; four, four, four and a six to take the over for 20. Twenty six off two overs, great start in anyone’s book! Things didn’t quite go to plan from there, Baz [McCullum] out in the next over, Redders out two overs later, Ross Taylor then out first ball of the ninth, Scotty [Styris] then out fourth ball of the over to leave us 82 from 11 overs with six wickets in hand. From here it was going to be tough, something freaky was going to have to happen; some amazing batting, some poor fielding or maybe a really random bowling change that we’ve seen in a couple of matches here and in the IPL. Alas, none of that was to happen, nothing freaky, nothing random or unexplainable and we were bowled out last ball of the 17th over. All over, game over, we never took our chances didn’t do things as good as we can.

I’m now home, on my couch, to finish off this update. My wife will be home soon, I’ll make tea, relax with her and then we’ll head off to a yoga class later. Life goes on... But how different could it have been!

	Nope, didn't drop any this time! © Getty Images

I hate it when I don’t play. Really hate it. I didn’t want to miss any matches of this World Twenty20 through form or injury; both have worked against me and I missed last night’s match against South Africa at Lords. And that’s also the second time I’ve been 12th man at Lord's, my only appearance there was the warm-up match against India prior to this tournament and that doesn’t count on any stats as it wasn’t an official Twenty20.

My back hasn’t been the best over the last week; it’s got quite tight through the lower area and has been a little tough to handle. I played against Scotland when it wasn’t great, I was OK to play but it wasn’t 100%. Over the days since that match it’s been up and down in terms of how tight and painful it’s been.

We trained at Lords the day before the match and I hit the nets to work on some plans for the SA batters. My back felt OK today so I went hard and got through some good stuff. I probably bowled about five overs when I stopped and headed in to see the physio. My lower back had ‘locked’ up and was rather sore. Not perfect and not what I wanted the day out before a big match.

So to the physio’s table, a place I’d been spending way too much time over this last week. Some work from the physio and then some acupuncture. I’ve always been a fan of acupuncture, no fear of needles, so get them in and give ‘em a tweak phys!

As we headed into the SA match we had the bare minimum to choose from because of injury and even in that bare minimum 12 there are still a mixture of niggles. I was considered fit and was hopeful of a start, not to happen, but Dan was out with a shoulder injury he picked up during a fielding session, Jesse out with a groin related injury and is now in hospital after getting considerably worse throughout yesterday and Franky with a knee issue. This meant Millsy, Broomy and Diamanti came into the 11 and it would be Diamanti’s Twenty debut. What a place to do it!

Our trainings throughout the pre tournament and since have been really well done and specific. Net training, generally, have been situation specific. You bowl with a new ball if you’re practicing that part of the innings and with an old one for the death stuff. I know that sounds obvious but it doesn’t always happen. The batters want to know what our fields would be so they can try to work out what we’re doing and where the gaps are. We’ve have had big open-wicket match situations, the blessing of having 15 in the touring squad, where we’ll practice the first six overs of an innings or the last four and almost compete for scores set or defended. I’ve enjoyed them, although tiring; they’ve set us up well.

The focus for last night’s match was the execution of our bowling plans and the boys did an amazing job. After a poor effort against Scotland we had to turn it around quick smart. We did more scouting, more research and had more discussion over the SA batting line up; for one reason that we knew more about them going into this match. Our plans were good and just had the execution to go.

We kept a very strong batting line up to 128 in the 20 overs; a very happy bowling and fielding group came off the park and up to the changing room. Butts and Nath were special last night, Butts only going for 13 off his four overs and Nath, with his little tweekers, going for just 4.5 per over.

I headed up to see the group and see what if anyone needed anything and then got back down onto the park and did a quick bit of work on my fielding. I wanted to do some as I always need to work on my fielding but more so to do some in the ‘change over’ light that we’ll have to field in more and more as we progress in the tournament. I caught everything, for a change, fielded all the ground balls clean and got what I wanted to out of it.

Baz started us off a treat rushing along to 19 off 11, in that time Gups had fallen to Steyn and Broomy to a very good caught and bowled by Kallis. Ross and Baz got were then together and put on 56 for the 4th wicket in 11 overs. The SA bowlers, through this period, contained these two big hitters and put themselves in a good position going into the last five overs.

We ended up leaving our run for the finish line a little late and lost by one run. Chasing a score of 128 shouldn’t have been so tough. We discussed, after the match, how we should have gone about the chase and what differences we could have made and would make next time we get ourselves in that position. Ross, in his innings, pulled up lame with a hamstring injury too which just adds to our injury worries going into the Super Eights stage of the competition.

I’m currently sitting in my hotel room, rain outside, India vs Ireland on the telly, almost finished this for today and just some food to get in before resting the body, keeping the back flat and preparing for tomorrow’s Super Eights match against Ireland. Hopefully we can field 11 fit players!!??

	Daniel Vettori struck twice in his first over to transform the warm-up game against India © Associated Press

What a start to the World Twenty20. The results so far have got the whole cricket world talking, the Dutch in particular; not that I can understand what they say, but they’re talking!

Since my last post we have now played three T20 matches; warm-up matches vs India and Australia and then our opening match vs Scotland on Saturday.

The match vs India was a great event. Just like at home the Indian supporters outnumbered the Kiwi support in the crowd and easily made the most noise, this made for a great atmosphere out in the middle at Lord’s. This was my first match at Lord’s, I had been the 12th man in the Test match there last summer which I was disappointed about, although if you have to be 12th man anywhere in the world, Lord’s is the place to be it; the food is outstanding and the training facilities are fantastic, so I ate loads of great food and trained as hard as I could.

This time I was playing, we batted first and scored 170 for 7. This is about the score we think will be very competitive in this competition and to get there with some great knocks throughout our batting line up was a great way to start our first full-on warm-up match.

I opened the bowling and got off to a handy start, just five off my first over. That helps the nerves quite a bit! My next over wasn’t so good, well, it wasn’t a bad over in the way that I bowled badly, I actually bowled the over pretty well, Rohit just smashed me to all parts. He hit me from some pretty good lengths and continued his form from the IPL. Dan [Vettori] then did what Dan does best; he came on, picked up two wickets in his first over and changed the course of the match. It was through this middle period that we pegged it back and managed to get our noses back in front and we stayed that way till the end. With a couple of overs left in the match a chant of “Kiwi, Kiwi...” erupted from a section of the crowd, this was a buzz. Such a long way from home and our supporters that have to put up with a lot of indifferent results made my skin tingle, made me even more proud to be a Kiwi. Brilliant!

A pretty happy bunch of lads knowing that this win, our third in a row against India, and this time against a 13-strong Indian team, was what we needed in terms of knowing where we were in our preparation.

We played the next evening at The Oval against Australia. We were really surprised at the crowd for this one too, a real good turnout just for a warm-up match. This time we let down the supporters that had turned out to watch. We scored 147 which, in the end was a spectacular score as we were 21 for 5 by the sixth over. Scotty and Peter did a great job to get us back in the game and give us a score that wasn’t quite enough but it was one we could try to defend. We couldn’t defend it and Australia knocked it off pretty comfortable in the last over.

Which brings us to the start of the competition ...

The tournament opened with a shock, a pumped-up Netherlands knocked over England at Lord’s. This was not the kind of result we wanted with our match coming up the next day vs another of the minnow nation teams, Scotland at The Oval. This kind of result would have given Scotland a huge amount of confidence heading into our match and when, because of weather, our match was shortened into a seven-over per innings game it made our match that much more of a lottery.

We didn’t bowl well either but we did learn a big lesson about a shortened match; we should have gone to death bowling earlier. Normally, in a T20, you’d go to death bowling in around the 15th over so that’s six overs of death bowling. We were only in the field for seven overs on Saturday and maybe should have even started in death mode and just look to restrict the scoring as opposed to trying to bowl normal lengths looking to restrict the run flow that way.

My first over went for 18, 16 off the bat and two leg-byes. Not good enough. I hit the lengths I wanted to but I should have changed, earlier in my over, and bowled differently. I hadn’t bowled the two previous days before this match as my back had locked up and doing anything that involved bending hurt. I got through warm-ups really well and knew that I was going to be fine to play. My back had freed up and I felt good bowling before the match. I was really disappointed to have gone for so many in the first over of the match and given Scotland some momentum and confidence. It’s this kind of momentum that can really change a game and I didn’t do my role well enough, that said, Scotland came out, swung hard, hit the ball pretty clean and rode their luck a little. Anyway you look at it though, it wasn’t good enough from most of us with the ball. Scotland scored an amazing 89 in their seven overs.

	Ross Taylor made sure New Zealand didn't stumble against a minnow © Getty Images

Half-time and our changing room was pretty nervous. We knew we could do it, knock the runs off, but there is the still the scary thought of being upset in our opening match and then being in the horrible position, like England are, of having to knock over one of the favourites, South Africa for us, to stay in the tournament.

Our batting was special; it was going to have to be if we were to win at any case. Nine fours and five sixes makes chasing any total easier and that was the base of our chase. We chased down 89 in just six overs and won with an over spare which is an even more staggering. At the finish of the match there wasn’t that normal victory feeling, sure we had won, sure we had done it well in the end, but we made it hard for ourselves and caused us to worry more than we should have had we got it right with the ball.

There was a tough review of the match later in the afternoon I came under some pretty heavy scrutiny, as I should have and have learnt again about this game.

I’ll catch you back here in a couple of days with a bit more background on what we’re up to at trainings and in preparation for our next match vs South Africa.

It's a lovely day here in London; the weather has been great this last week to be fair, and because of that we have been able to train, play and enjoy our time leading up to the ICC World Twenty20.

We arrived in London on Saturday, the day of the FA Cup final and guess what, a group of us managed to get our hands on a few tickets and go. What an event, what a stadium, what a treat. We sat in the Chelsea section - it didn’t really matter as none of us really had an allegiance to either them or Everton.

Got to the hotel, checked in and then was straight out, with the wife, to a show. We went and saw The Lion King. Amazing. Really loved it and that is one of the treats of being in London, the things you can just go, see and do.

But back to the cricket news.

The two day previous to getting to London we had two more warm up matches, one against the PCA (which included a couple of Irish, Netherlands, and the left-over New Zealand guys not in our XI. And Darren Gough). It was a one sided match where we won easily and there were some standout performances. Taylor 74, Gups 56 and Jesse 37. I managed three wickets and am really starting to feel like my Twenty20 bowling is getting better and better. I’m doing everything I can to keep it simple, using Dan at mid-off to bounce ideas off, and making sure my run up is smooth. It’s starting to feel good.

Then on Friday we played the Netherlands, again a one-sided match. We scored 194 off our 20 overs, Baz top scoring with 62 and some great cameos in there from Broom, Styris, and Oram. This match for me was another step forward. With no disrespect to the Dutch boys, the quality of the opposition wasn’t of that of India and Australia that we face today and tomorrow in two more warm up matches, but it was still good to bowl well with rhythm and control. The run up was my real concentration in this one and it seems the more I cruise in, the better position I get myself in at the crease and therefore give myself a better chance of getting where I want it. I know I can’t always have such a cruisey run up as when the wind blows you have to battle a bit more to get to the crease, but for now, it’s working really well.

This evening we head off to Lords for our 5th warm up match against the current T20 World Cup Champions, India. Our last series was against them at home and in the two T20 matches we had some good success; we won them both. The ODIs that followed weren’t so good for us though. It’ll be a good match tonight against a seriously destructive batting line up and a very experienced T20 bowling attack, a real insight to see where we really are in our preparation for this event.

The following evening we play Australia at the Oval in our final hit out before we start, for real, on the 6th against Scotland.

I’m really excited with this event. Sure the word “excited” is used a lot in interviews and chats with the media, but I really am. This is my first World event where all nations are attending. Just four months ago I wasn’t even in the Black Cap one-day team and now I am here at the T20 World Cup... I’m excited. But hopefully I’ve learnt enough lately to realise that my excitement levels can hinder my performance, so I have to keep it simple and keep those emotions under control.