Thursday 24th January 2013
After less than a week at home since the Austria trip it was time to get back on the road for the next two events in Nairobi, Kenya. This is the 3rd year that I’ve been at these tournaments and each year the trip gets better and better so I’m really looking forward to a great couple of weeks.
Yesterday I met up with Alex Hagon at Charing Cross train station at 3.30pm and then we made our way via the underground to Heathrow. It’s normally a very straightforward journey but there were a few delays and we had to change trains a few times which meant we didn’t arrive at Heathrow until just after our scheduled meeting time of 5pm – I absolutely hate being late and after texting Holly Hutchinson at 4.30pm to say there were some problems I could tell she was loving the fact that she was on time and we weren’t!!
The flight left London at 7pm and being the nice coach that I am I managed to get Holly and Alex three seats to themselves so that they could sleep while I struggled in my single seat! It couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked over and saw Alex asleep in the middle seat with the other two seats empty but I didn’t have the heart to wake him up and ask him if he would swap seats so I could have all three!!
We arrived just before 6am local time in Nairobi and then had a bit of a wait for Anais Nussaume who was flying in from Thailand to meet up with us. Once she arrived we met our driver and after an hour of sitting in very slow moving traffic we eventually arrived at the Nairobi Club. One of the best things about these events is that the hotel and the club are on the same site so the players can walk back to their rooms on their own if they need to shower / change or if they forget something (which happens most of the time!).
After catching up on some sleep we all met for lunch at midday and then went through the normal procedure of changing up some money, going to the supermarket and generally getting a good feel for the local area before heading over to the courts to practice at 3pm. The altitude and the bouncy courts always catches the players out here so it was really important to get a good hours practice in even though everyone was still struggling a little from the overnight flight. The first five minutes were very interesting with balls flying all over the place but then all three players settled down and started to feel the ball a little more which resulted in a pretty good session overall.
Holly, Alex and Anais after our 1st training session
After training we all cooled down and stretched out before walking back across the cricket pitch to the hotel to try and shower off all of the clay we had around our ankles!
It’s been a custom over the previous two years to go to the Fairview Hotel for dinner most evenings as they do a really good pasta buffet so I thought I’d take the players there for their first night. Everyone was impressed with the food but it was obvious that tiredness was definitely settling in – can you believe we didn’t play one game of cards through the entire meal?!
After the short 5 minute walk back to the Nairobi Club we all went straight back to our rooms to get an early night ready for a full days training tomorrow.
