Geraint Jones’ Dubai Blog – 15th March

It’s been a hectic past week or so and I’m glad that we’ve finally got our first win under our belts in the Twenty 20 qualifiers.

Before I set off for Dubai on Saturday, there was the small matter of my Golf Day at The Grove on the Wednesday. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t up to much and there was plenty of us donning our wet weather gear, so thanks to all of you that made it.

Knowing I was going to be away for a few weeks and it being a busy time around the farm, I have been doing as much as I can to help my father-in-law John with all the new lambs.

As some of you may have already seen from my tweet, John got himself in a slightly compromising position with one ewe as we tried to get a lamb to feed!

Arriving in Dubai on Saturday gave me a few days to prepare with all the PNG lads ahead of our first game against Afghanistan on Tuesday. Surprisingly the weather wasn’t up to much for the first few days so we only got the one day outside to prepare for the game.

In the end, I got my fourth duck in a row in international cricket and was questioning whether I’d end up getting the Olympic rings with five. Having got those ducks back in Perth all those years ago, I was going to make sure that the first chanceI got against Canada I was going to drop the ball and run!

Thankfully, I made a score against the Canadians on Wednesday, but we came up just six runs short in the end.

Despite losing our first two games, we have stayed together and today saw me don the gloves for the first time. Up until now I’ve been hiding at mid-off or down at third man!

Today we moved over to Sharjah and the boys put in a much better performance against Nepal as we won by 35 runs and I feel like I’m starting to contribute now as I hit 32 coming in at number three.

Our bowlers bowled really well and the wicket was quite skiddy, so it was a good effort to get up to near 140 and we defended the total as best as we could.

The trip back to the hotel was quite something and I’ve never heard singing as loud before. My team mates really know how to belt out a tune and they’re all proud to be playing for our country.

I’m trying to learn the team song, although I think my words are slightly different to everyone elses!

On Friday we play Hong Kong so we’ll be hoping for another win and that will mean our day off on Saturday will be a little bit more enjoyable.

Most days see us go to the game early in the morning, get back to the hotel in the afternoon, have a swim and a wind down and then a bit of dinner and bed. The life of a cricketer!

If I get the chance I’ll get to the shops when I have time as Jen will be wanting some fake tan!

I’ve been trying to keep up with what the boys are up to over in Antigua, but haven’t spoken with anyone since they left. With twitter it’s good to see some of the pictures and nice to see from the itinerary I got e-mailed before they departed that they were going to be up early for some training sessions.

The past week has seen us bring in Scott Newman from Middlesex on loan and it’ll be good if he can come in and score us some runs whilst Daniel Bell-Drummond is away in Australia with the England Under 19′s.

Right, time to go and get my head down as we have got to play Hong Kong at 10am!

Geraint