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Niall O’Brien reflects on defeat to Australia but a happier day visiting the Arklow Boys home yesterday which helped put things into perspective somewhat.
It wasn’t the best day at the office for us against Australia on Wednesday. We know we can play better than we showed and we’ll have to if we are going to beat West Indies on Monday. It was disappointing to lose but we still have one game left, we still have a chance to go through to Super 8s – we didn’t get close to doing ourselves justice and everyone’s focus now turns to a big performance on Monday.

I do think the Australians were nervous, they were afraid to lose to us and they came out hard and full of the chat. In the past, bigger teams wouldn’t have given us the respect of trying to knock us off our game, but it was great that none of the lads took a step back. I think this shows the respect that we have around world cricket now and it means we have to be on our game every time to beat the bigger sides.

We all have our roles in the team and mine is to keep the score ticking over and give the bigger hitters around me a platform to work from. Not many of us did our jobs on the pitch on Wednesday, though, but hopefully we can change that against the West Indies. If we are going to get that vital win we are going to have to play a lot better – that’s pretty obvious. We’ve had one bad day but have been playing well up until that, so we know what we can do, now we just have to do it when it matters most.

On a personal note, I would love to score a fifty against the West Indies, I have a good record against them and I’m backing myself to help get some runs for the team. The main thing is that the team wins and I just want to contribute to that in any way that I can.

After the match we headed back to the hotel and I caught up with mum, dad, my sister Ciara and her husband Dave and Rangan from our club in Dublin, Railway. It was nice to kick back after a tough day where things didn’t go our way and catch up with family.

Things are very different in Sri Lanka to Ireland. For one thing, the sun shines almost every day! The people are so, so friendly and happy all the time. They always have a smile for you and are absolutely mad about cricket so they are happy to see us wherever we go. I do miss a pint of Guinness though, you definitely can’t get that here.

We headed off today for a very special visit to some amazing kids at the Arklow Boys Home which is an orphanage down the coast from Colombo. The visit here definitely helped all of the lads who headed down and we were glad to be able to raise a smile or two with the kids, some of whom were very handy cricketers, switch hits and all! It was great fun and a visit I won’t forget.

Niall O’Brien
It was never easy against a good Aussie attack
[347] Niall O’Brien – obrien-niall
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