KEY POINTS:
It's a few thousand kilometres away but India is never far from cricketers' minds these days.
An auction tomorrow will decide which of eight franchises have won the rights to some of the game's leading players for the first Indian Premier League competition in April.
And the rebel Indian Cricket League has eight New Zealanders on its books for its second edition staring next month.
And if the words "India" and "Twenty20" in the same sentence are threatening to induce a worldwide outbreak of yawning, New Zealand's new ball man Chris Martin treats the talk in matter-of-fact fashion.
He is not among the five New Zealand players signed for the IPL, and says he has not had an approach to join the rebel operation. Rushing to check his mail for correspondence bearing an Indian postmark doesn't seem top of his daily agenda.
Martin is 33 and playing all three forms of the international game which has long been his ambition after several years of being largely ignored for one-day cricket.
"It's all peripheral stuff and hasn't impacted on anything I'm doing at the moment," he said yesterday.
With the amount of talk swirling over the amount of cash washing about, and whether players had been linked to an Indian move, the effect could be destabilising within a dressing room. Not so, said Martin.
"It's a fact of life and one that's not going to go away. As far as conversations in the dressing room go, perhaps they were a little more secret in the early days. But as the months have gone by it's become commonplace to talk about these things."
Martin said having his name linked as a possible contender for an ICL contract was neither here nor there.
"I suppose with key members of the side who aren't signed up and are performing well, then New Zealand Cricket will want to keep them in the country. So you're always going to be linked to Indian money at some stage, for good or bad."
England's top order are top of his thoughts before tomorrow's fourth ODI at McLean Park. He took two wickets in each of New Zealand's wins in the first two games before getting touched up early on at Eden Park where his first two overs cost 19.
Where others might prefer keeping schtum on strategies, Martin is refreshingly up front on tactics to England's top order.
Alastair Cook "has struggled to left armers round the world" so Martin has gone around the wicket with his natural angle running away from lefthanders.
With the aggressive Phil Mustard "you try and cramp him and make sure he doesn't have too many areas on the park to hit".
Key batsman Kevin Pietersen "tends to hit good-length balls at the top of the bounce. There is a very small margin for error". But Pietersen's desire to dominate early is such that if he can be pegged down early there's the chance of a run out. England's running between the wickets has been ordinary thus far, courtesy in large part to terrific New Zealand fielding inside the circle.
New Zealand are back at full capacity with those who had nipped off for a State Shield game on Sunday returning yesterday.
Young Northern Districts lefthander Daniel Flynn is thrilled to be back after a Twenty20 outing in Christchurch. "I'm just keeping it simple ... concentrating on watching the ball and staying still."
Peter Fulton's average recent form makes him vulnerable, but a respectable ODI average of 36.32 suggests he'll see the series out.
