It was a Tsuruashi-dachi that any karate Sensei would have approved of. The Crane Foot Stance for the less initiated. The right foot was raised and kept parallel with his left knee, while the hands were spread wide at shoulder-height and shaped like claws.

Yet it didn’t quite seem right. Maybe because this wannabe karateka was an Irishman with a distinct mop of red hair and he was pulling off this patented karate move at the centre of the Gabba during a cricket World Cup match.

Of course, it wasn’t totally uncalled for like Kevin O’Brien insists. The batsman, whose catch he had just held onto on the second attempt was after all aptly named Krishna Karate Chandran. If anything, it was a tribute to the UAE all-rounder’s unique name.

Or so O’Brien wants us to believe.

“The batsman’s surname was Karate, so just one of those things. I’m here for seven weeks to play in the World Cup. I want to have fun. I want to score more runs, take more wickets and hopefully you’ll see a few more strange celebrations,” he says while adding that though the Crane Stance might not take over from the Chicken-Dance, it was a sign of things to come.

While he did celebrate his catch at slip in unique fashion, the brutish manner in which O’Brien finished off the UAE with the bat was all too familiar, even if he got out before the job was completed for a 25-ball 50.

He had been equally brash and merciless against England four years ago on that dramatic night at the Chinnaswamy Stadium when the Irish pulled off a major coup. At Brisbane, the 30-year-old bludgeoned two sixes. In Bangalore he did so on six occasions.

The backyard game

But growing up, the burly right-hander’s ability to clear fences ensured his batting stints were limited and made him the worst batsman in the cricket-crazy O’Brien household.

“When Niall, I and our other brother and sisters used to play in the back garden, if you hit it out of the garden you were out. I was the worst player. I used to face two or three balls, hit a six and get out,” he reveals.

O’Brien in many ways epitomises the unbridled joy and uninhibited passion that Irish cricket represents and burgeons with. But he insists that there has always been a lot of science behind his power-hitting. That it’s not as mundane as ‘swinging the bat at it as hard as you can’.

“When I’m sitting on the sidelines, I am looking at what the bowlers are doing. It’s easy to pick up whether a bowler is having a bad day, and I really look to target that bowler. Against the UAE, the seam bowlers were bowling full, and my strength is hitting straight back. A 75 per cent hit was going to carry over the ropes,” he explains.

On that day in Bangalore, every English bowler it seemed was having a bad day. Well, they were anyway after O’Brien strode out to the centre. And it seems inevitable that bowling attacks stronger than the UAE’s will dread the danger that he represents, regardless of whether he’s in a Crane or an O’Brien stance.