Despite looking like he wants to sweep your chimney, Iain O’Brien is an international cricketer. Not only that, but he’s blogging all about it. JRod (twice), Paul Holden and Mike (and Ben) on Cricket have all pointed to this bit of cricketing literary genius. He’s simply writing honestly about what it’s like to play international Cricket. And he writes well.

This is brilliant, and should have happened years ago. Imagine if, say, Richard Hadlee had blogged the Brisbane test:

Woke up. Gave the mo a good trim. Did those Aussie bastards all day. Can’t believe Vaughan fucking Brown got that wicket. I should have dropped it. Entered stats into the book back at the hotel to relax. Slept for seven hours and forty five minutes. Disconcerting dream about Karen.

I think it’s fairly safe to assume Iain’s blog is flying under NZ Cricket’s radar; there’s simply NO WAY any decent PR would let this happen, unedited, with no clear revenue / flogging crappy Canterbury gear angle, on a free Blogspot account.

But now that Australia’s Fox Sports have picked up on it, it’ll be touch and go how long it lasts ‘unedited’. I reckon four days. And it’ll be a real shame, ‘cos this kind of thing is sadly lacking from the official site. Plus, I think it’s kind of sweet that when his team mates are on the XBox, playing cards or watching themselves on the telly, he’s slaving over a hot keyboard.

So go have a read. Just don’t let on to NZ Cricket. Iain, if you’re reading, wanna swap links?