Wednesday, April 5

I meet six of the squad at Heathrow. The remainder of the tour party is travelling from Manchester. Hopefully we'll all meet up in Singapore on the way to Melbourne. Bizarrely, we bump into Phil Tufnell at the airport on his way to play for a World XI somewhere. He poses for a few photos with us and we share a few jokes about Australians - the casual banter of international cricketers! Just as long as we do better than that other England cricket team.

Our squad of 13 players consists of five totally blind players (described as B1s in blind sport), and eight partially sighted players (B2 or B3, depending on how much sight they have) and our coach, who is fully sighted. I am B3.

Each team must have a minimum of four B1s and a maximum of four B3s. Of course, there are always arguments over sight categories. The trouble is that it is really difficult to be sure about a person's sight. If you ask a person to read a chart and they say that they can't see it, how can you prove that they can? We have ensured that all our players have had their level of sight confirmed by an optometrist or an ophthalmologist.

Friday

We arrive in Melbourne without a hitch (other than nearly losing one of our B2s in Duty Free in Singapore). Our hotel is very central, so a few of us decide to head off to explore. Funnily enough, it's quite chilly at 7am as we wander up Swanston Street in our shorts and T-shirts. I think we had all been expecting Australia to be unbearably hot.

Generally the B1s rely on being guided by the others. Some of them will carry a cane but often they just grab on. In unfamiliar areas it's often the only way for them to get around efficiently.

Melbourne is built on a grid system and has a large tram network. This is fine for getting around but very tricky if you are trying to cross the road. The trams travel down the middle of the street and make very little noise as they creep up on you. The other notable feature is that the pedestrian crossings make a strange clicking noise when it is safe to cross.

Sunday

The first match of the tour is against Victoria. Since blind cricket is played differently throughout the world, we are playing a variety of forms of the game on this tour. The bat is always the same, as in ordinary cricket, and so too is the length of the pitch. But today we use the Australian ball in the morning and the English ball in the afternoon.

It is the first time most of us have seen the Aussie ball (the 'lobster pot', as Bill Frindall, president of British Blind Sport, describes it) and we are completely bemused. It is a vaguely spherical object made from wicker, about the size of a hand-grenade, which contains what appear to be bottle tops to make a noise.

It is bowled underarm and has a very erratic bounce. Most of us struggle with it but we discover a couple of batting stars in Dave Wood (B3) and Phil Rigby (B1), who manage to keep our expected defeat respectable. We gain a quick revenge in the afternoon when we beat the Victorians by more than 100 runs when we play them using the english ball we brought with us.

In England we use a size-three football (about nine inches in diameter), containing ball-bearings, which is bowled overarm as in standard cricket - the only problem is that our ball is not as noisy as theirs. We are the only country in the world that plays overarm bowling, which is a major disadvantage to us when it comes to playing the underarm game.

Wednesday

We play two matches against New South Wales at the ground where Mark and Steve Waugh began their careers. This time we have a much closer game with the Australian ball, which our players have taken to calling the 'waste paper basket'. We lose by only 12 runs and might have won if one of our B3s had not strained his back.

But then we have a match using our ball, which is nearly a complete disaster. New South Wales bat first and are soon in deep trouble at 54 for seven. However, they recover strongly to finish on 188 after 25 overs. We are ticking along quite nicely until the weather clouds over and the light starts to fade.

Now, we have heard all the jokes about blind cricket and light, but obviously some of our partially sighted players really struggle in poor light (myself included). In the end I am batting in the gloom with the Aussies needing one more wicket for victory and I simply can't see the ball at all.

NSW are very sporting in agreeing to call a halt due to bad light - the first time I am aware of a blind cricket match ever stopping for such a reason.

Friday

When we were relaxing on Bondi Beach I had laughingly suggested to our coach, Andy Sellins, that we all dye our hair to look like surfers. This morning Andy dashes out first thing to buy up all the hair colouring he can lay his hands on. Before long everyone agrees to take part. Unfortunately, Andy's enthusiasm is not matched by any skill in the hairdressing arts and we all come out looking ginger.

This afternoon we fly to Brisbane for a welcome evening hosted by the Queensland Blind Cricket Association. There is much hilarity at the state of our hair and several of us decide to have another go with the peroxide to see if we can eradicate the orange tinge.

Saturday

We have renamed ourselves the England Blond Cricket Team. Today we play Queensland using our ball and win quite easily.

Tomorrow we are playing Australia in the first full international match using the UK rules. If the match against New South Wales is anything to go by we might be struggling.

Sunday

Happily, we win quite comfortably. Australia bat first and we manage to keep them pinned down. We then unleash our secret weapon, Tim Guttridge (B1), who smashes the bowling to all parts of the ground and is named man of the match.

So the first part of the tour has come to a successful conclusion, but I can't help thinking that it is only now that we are getting down to the real thing: the Tri-Nations Tournament. This will be played with yet another type of ball, known in England as the 'blind bullet'. The size of a regular cricket ball, but made of hard white plastic containing ball-bearings, this is the most widely used ball in international blind cricket.

Wednesday

A very disappointing day. In itself a defeat by Australia is not the end of the world but we really had a chance to win this match. They scored 296 - a good total from the 40 overs available - but after 10 overs we were well on course to pass it. Unfortunately, we suffered a familiar England batting collapse and finished 71 runs short.

I think we all feel deflated, but looking on the bright side we did better than New Zealand did against Australia and, if we sort out our batting, we have the potential to beat them next time. Tim Guttridge put in another outstanding performance and scored 82, which I think may be the highest ever total by a B1 batsman in international cricket.

Thursday

What an incredible game! We snatch a victory with an amazing rearguard action from batsmen Mike Ferguson (B2) and man-of-the-match Jonathan Iturbe (B3) - we have to score nearly 100 runs in the last 10 overs and we do it. The New Zealanders look really gutted - I think they feel that they may have blown their chances of reaching the final.

There is great jubilation in our camp but I don't think it will be a particularly wild night - everyone looks shattered. We now have two days off to prepare for our second game against Australia.

Sunday

The Easter Sunday Massacre. Australia beat us by 10 wickets today and they deserved to. Once again our batting let us down badly - we seem to be finding ever more ingenious ways to get out. This time we had three stumpings, which is worrying.

I think we might still be bowling at the Australian openers now if the game hadn't finished. Once they were in there was no way we could trouble them with our bowling.

But a win against New Zealand tomorrow will be enough to get us into the final. In fact, a narrow defeat would be good enough but I don't want to think about that.

Monday

Rain. Would you believe it, we come all the way to Australia and it's like a wet weekend in Manchester. Fortunately we lose only half-an-hour of play and it works to our advantage as the New Zealanders start their innings very slowly. In the event we win quite comfortably and now face Australia in the final.

Tuesday

The day before the final. We are taking it easy today. Some of the boys have decided to take a fishing trip off the Gold Coast. I hope they don't capsize - that would be a bit difficult to explain.

Wednesday

I think you could say that we were saved by the rain today. We put in a miserable performance this morning but the rain came pouring down after lunch before the Australians had a chance to make any inroads into our modest total of just over 150. We will all have to come back and try again tomorrow.

Thursday

... come again another day. There is a complete deluge and it is clear that there is no way that play is going to be possible. The decision, which seems fair, is to give the trophy to Australia because they did better in the group stage.

This evening we have a final get-together with the other teams which continues long into the night. The Manchester half of our party leaves tomorrow and the rest of us head up to the Gold Coast for a few days.