Speaker by Various Artists

I see this article as 500 words worth of panacea. Swallow this and sit down in happy bliss and enjoy the World Cup with a cup of hot chocolate and a smile beaming. This will relieve you of stress eczema you may develop watching Daryl Tuffey run in, or Stephen Fleming doing his “Bambi on ice” impression while facing some innocuous spinner from Bangladesh. Or when they take the bubble wrap off Shane Bond and realise they’ve left a limb in the overhead lockers. This article is the blue pill. Here comes the truth – we will not win the World Cup.

Ouch. It even hurt writing that. It seems so seditious. We have such collective belief that we will win the World Cup (and the America’s Cup, and the Rugby World Cup, and well, some shiny things at the Olympics) that it seems treasonous to lance the bubble of expectation. But I urge you all to get in touch with that large doubt gland somewhere at the base of your cerebral cortex. Tap into it, and read on.

You can never accuse the Black Caps of not being good enough. We were good enough to steam to the semi-finals in 1992. We were good enough to placidly get within a half dozen balls of the final in 1979. We made the semi-finals in 1999, but forgot to turn up. Remember also some bollocks teams have managed to win the World Cup – well only three, but India 83, Australia 87 and Sri Lanka 96 weren’t exactly jewels in the Crown. Average players Mike Veletta, Balwinder Sandhu, Greg Dyer and Pramodya Wickremasinghe all have World Cup winners medals. In all previous 8 World Cups we have had only one average side – in 1987 when Richard Hadlee decided to stay in his tent.

We lose because of our ‘role’ in international cricket. Even when New Zealand has strolled around cricket fields like they were wearing imperial purple, when it comes to the perception among other teams it has always been as the ‘spoiler’, the dark horse galloping along the beach about to spoil the party of all the pretty ponies. Only to turn up and realise it was a Clydesdale not an Arabian.

We “nick” games against the big boys, pickpocket wickets and mug runs. Rarely do we look dominant. Remember in 1996 and 2003 we won the first half of games against Australia. But as soon as Shane Warne walked out to bat in 1996, and as soon as Vettori opened the batting in 2003, it was as if we’d been found out, caught red-handed in our balaclavas with the sterling silver falling out of our green Air New Zealand bag. Warne belted the pop-gun attack and the initiative was wrested in moments. Vettori smeared McGrath for four then got out and the top order followed his example.

We don’t want heroic failures. We want the Cup. Is that going to happen? Is Fleming talking about ‘destiny’ like Imran Khan in 1992, or strolling around with Arjuna Ranatunga’s blissful self-assurance of 1996. Nope. “Any one of 8 teams could win the World Cup” he said. We are “in the mix”, stealthily putting on our mittens and polishing our crowbars, ready to steal a game or two against the big boys.

So take the blue pill. Accept that we will not win the World Cup this year. There will be a few great performances – but we will stumble and be noticed for the burglars we are. Enjoy Ross Taylor’s batting, Bondy’s bowling, the absence of Hamish Marshall. That’s enough.

Oh but I do want them to win soooo badly.

Yesterday's game, the requisite fizzer with which to begin a world cup tourney, had everyone here in the studio pouring over the schedule again, trying to decide when we'd see the first Good Game. The best bet for fans is have a couple after work on Friday, get to bed, then rise horribly early on Saturday for our boys against Blighty. Begin with tea, then take coffee and fistfuls of toast between overs, and in the break between innings, bacon with beans and eggs. Possibly add kippers or sausages.

In watching world cups, we non-players all kind of match that dire tag of deficiency, the 'confidence player'. Begin poorly, staring at dull games and impotence, and you'll burn out. As coaches tell players they must win their first game, armchair sports psychologists suggest that if housework, hygiene, conversation and recycling are to be thrown into the back seat of your life for about five weeks, then you've really got to sit in front of a decent game early on. So you've still got two days to get some sleep hours in the bank, mow the lawns, and catch up briefly with your loved ones (marriage counsellors call this the Gilchrist Method) before you join the odyssey in earnest.

Enough banter
Yay, we're under way. There's excitement over at Cricinfo. Stories include 'Arthur warns of minnow scare', and 'Aussies could get whacked in a bar'. Let's hope so. Yesterday the Windies were efficient, and beaming. They surely have the nicest smiles in world cricket. Simon Taufel looked flushed, Billy Bowden looked silly with zinc on his thin lips. A great start from him, nobody predicted a black-and-white minstrel routine. This really could be his world cup. Pakistan looked spiritually resolute but deeply glum. They weren't talking to each other, so at least they weren't breaking any team rules.

Sleepy time

As I write, the brave Scots are being thrashed by Norwich City. Central midfielder Ponting and veteran winger McGrath look to be controlling the game. On the other channel, there's a mini-epic unravelling as the plucky Kenyans tighten their grip on the doughty Canadians. This game is of interest to supporters wearing beige dressing gowns on the wrong side of the globe. Gros Islet looks a picture.

Looking ahead: while you're still squirming in your bed tomorrow morning, Ireland will beat Zimbabwe, that stricken rhino lying in the dust, sweating, with vultures and crabs nibbling at his ribs. And Sri Lanka will butcher the boys from Bermuda. Many of you will have seen the birth of a sporting celebrity last week, The Leverock of Gibraltar. He was even featuring in the top 5 player searches on Cricinfo the other day. Those no-meat sports stories and snappy montages (à la the 6 o'clock news, or worse, boofhead Dobbo's banal 'Plays of the Week') mightn't really help us understand a game we've missed, but they are to irony what steak and chips are to big Dwayne.

As we go to air (as they say on One News) the big questions are unanswered- is 241 a good enough score to win a game at this tournament?, Is a strike rate in the 30s going to be the way of things for the team batting first? Has to be said neither Pakistan nor Windies look like world beaters…

Anyway, It is that time; despite the jet lagged stumble against Bangladesh. The time before all major tournaments, when we look at the Black Caps line-up and, for a moment, we all believe. We believe that Lou Vincent’s pills will arrive in time, that Travis Wilson has remembered that you don’t have a glove on when you are catching in cricket and that Macca will get that glint in his eye.

We have of course been here before- many times. The unbeatable team that went to England in 2004, the World Cup in 2003. Sometimes I blame Flem. When he looks down the barrel of the camera, all tall, dark and handsome and says the team believe- we are inclined to do the same.

We all know the story, its not who to put in, its who to leave out. Barring any further paralysis or fractures among our bowlers, we look great on paper. Personally I am worried that there is no place in a balanced team for two metre Peter. We need his batting; his scary height helps too. But we have to have bowling options and that means Styris and McMillan (along with Bond, Franklin, Oram, Vettori, and Patel/Gillespie). With Flem, Vincent and Taylor up top- there is no room for Fulton. A matter of who to leave out you see.

Look at those names. On their day they could all win a match almost single-handedly. A balanced bowling attack with options to burn. We need Fulton to play the head down innings, but the others can do it if they have to.

I think Brendon McCullum could be the star of this tournament. He will inevitably save us at least once- even if it is when we are 100-5 against Canada, and he will be able to go over cover and reach the boundary with ease at almost every ground. He’ll talk non-stop in the field too- and Michael Holding will notice him.

I am beginning to believe. And then I remember the frailty, the fragility of it all. Didn’t we disintegrate spectacularly against Sri Lanka earlier this season? Aren’t we still leaking more than 100 in the last 15 overs almost every game? Haven’t we dropped at least two easy catches a game this season? Is there something genetic about the weakness of New Zealand backs?

Vic Marks in the Guardian at the weekend said New Zealand are always the dark horses of World Cups. The question is which horse will show- Zabeel or Mr Ed?

In the last of our looks at teams in the Black Caps' group, Hamish profiles the England team, while Macca comes to grips with the opening ceremony.

Just as the English believe they invented cake, gin, massage, kittens, Aretha Franklin, thumbs, Oktoberfest and the gear stick, they also believe they invented cricket. Their expectation of victory at the World Cup is based not on past success, but on copyright. The Barmy Army in all their cartoonish tribute to contracting scurvy and skin cancer, are simply enforcing their Intellectual Property Rights. It's our game. We expect to win. Or we'll take our bat home.

Two of the most frightening words in cricket are England Expects. It comes with so much sneering defiance, so much unfocussed faith that it is like watching witch-trials. And it isn't the expectation of foolhardy heroism like the Charge of the Light Brigade. Or Oates going out into the blizzard for "some time". It is with the attitude of entitlement that England wore as they colonised India, most of Africa, and the wee cul-de-sac in the South Pacific. It is with the superiority of Imperialism that you can see every time hooligans head through Europe, or Oasis release another album, or you try to enter the mother country at Heathrow with a passport at 6 a.m.

Unfortunately England now have a certain swagger. Its seems so wrong to watch an Englishman swagger, like watching your grandmother krump. But they beat Australia three times in a row (as if that's hard) and won the Commonwealth Bank Series and now approach the World Cup with some sense that they might win this tournament.

Luckily England are hopeless, and always have been. They have the second worst record of all major test playing nations at the World Cup. Finals - three. Wins - zero. Only New Zealand can claim a more dire record.

Normally England are a bunch of talented (more or less) individuals held together with string and ceiling wax. Individuals like Laker, Underwood, Hammond, Gooch have performed marvellous feats, but rarely does an England XI all pull together in the same direction. England are, bizarrely, always less than the sum of their parts. The question that the next fortnight will answer is whether the talented individuals in the England squad can rise above the morass. So let's examine the team

THE MORASS

Jon "Bonjovi" Lewis and Jamie Dalrymple are the very definition of bits and pieces. Neither do anything well. Then there is the wicketkeeper Paul Nixon, selected on the basis that he was Tourette's. Jimmy Anderson, Saj Mahmood and Liam Plunkett run in and bowl with enthusiasm and will all take wickets, but they haemorrhage runs. The batting is mostly designed around the grafters and the placers. Good for test cricket, bad for chasing 110 in the last ten overs. There is not one dasher among Andrew Strauss, Ian Bell, Ed Joyce and Michael Vaughan. Ravinder Bopara meanwhile is 14 years old and can only play if it's not a school night.

TALENTED INDIVIDUALS

Michael Vaughan is a majestic batsmen in test cricket but has knees made of poppadom. He doesn't seem likely to be the one barrelling down the pitch to convert two into three. Monty Panesar is almost as good as the hype which surrounds him. He can bowl accurately, but you can't help but wonder if batsmen will flail him on the small West Indian grounds where a top edge will head into the next postcode. Paul Collingwood is a very useful operator in all departments, a bit like Rod Latham and Roger Twose rolled into one. But thinner.

And then there are the two men who could pull England further than they deserve. Andrew Flintoff can inspire the country with his feats with bat and ball. He has the Henry V factor that England seems to need. But the real star is Kevin Pietersen, the best one day batsman in the world. To watch KP in full flow is to watch how cricket would have been played had it been invented by Vikings. If England progress KP will have had something to do with it.

He's not English at all though. He is cricket's Zola Budd. He's South African.

A continuation of our profiles of teams in the Black Caps' group. Remember to keep up with Macca's take on the delights of the Caribbean.

Team Profile: Kenya: Lest We Forget.

Memory is a strange thing. I can still remember my first three scores playing cricket as a 9 year-old (0, 9(retired), 11(off four balls - two edged fours and three overthrows), but I had forgotten, or more likely blocked out, that Kenya made the semi finals of the 2003 World Cup.

They did so of course because New Zealand gifted them the points by refusing to go to Nairobi for security reasons and because the Sri Lankans self destructed, probably through stress about their security. (Where was Gilbert Enoka when they needed him?).

The chances of a repeat in 2007 are remote, but if NZ can lose to Bangladesh in a warm-up game, why not?

Well, partly because despite great strides Kenyan cricket is still a bit of a shambles. Things have improved after a major restructuring of the national association, in response to corruption claims, player strikes and nepotism. Personally, I am always suspicious of an association whose Chief Executive is the older brother of the national captain

In January the team actually went on strike because they did not get match fees for a cancelled game against Canada. Who knew they were even getting match fees? Actually according to the blogs, in the local leagues clubs are held to ransom on match day by players arguing over match fees. However they did win the ICC World Cricket League in February, netting them $250,000 in prize money which presumably can pay a few match fees.

Another reason is that Kenya claim to have already won their World Cup. Call it realism or a lack of vision, but as Murray Deaker would say that attitude won't get you a biomag. Interesting to note that Thomas Odyo says the Black Caps are the second most disciplined team in the world after Australia. Presumably he is referring to the number of times Braces has to go to the player's rooms after 'lights out'.

The Kenyans are coached by former West Indian spinner Roger Harper. He was part of the Windies team who went down to Kenya at the 1996 Cup. There are theories about in Kenya that Harper is in fact a carefully placed mole, working on the 'revenge is a coruba and coke served very cold' principle. We shall see.

In addition to Tikolo and Odoyo, the team does have some young talent. The up and coming batsman is 20 year old Tanmay Mishra. Indian born, bats like Sehwag, fields like Jonty Rhodes and looks a little like a young Mohammed Azharuddin. Keep that young man away from the bookies. In the bowling stakes we are told to look out for Hiren Varaiya a left arm slow bowler and seamer Nehemiah Odhaimbo.

If nothing else, Kenya will win the prize for the most enthusiastic blogger. There to ensure we never forget.