Dylan Cleaver: There's no such thing as a sure thing, but ...

There are few things as satisfying in life as a good 'I told you so'. So I'm told.

Conversely, there are few things as galling as knowing something, but not having people know you knew something before everybody else ends up knowing that something.

So at the risk of looking stupid (no need for further comment here, please), let me enter the realm of the soothsayer and chart the course for a cricketing 2005.

Here's just a few things I think I know.

And, if on December 31, 2005, most of these predictions have a most un-Nostradamus look to them, I will rest easy in the knowledge you will have all forgotten about them.

I'm sure I know New Zealand will put up a better showing against Australia when they meet in their three-test series in March then they did in November. I also know that's about as bold a prediction as saying it will probably rain tomorrow but baby steps ...

... OK, force my hand. We lose the test series 2-1 and win, yes win, the one-dayers 3-2. I'm remaining on the fence for the Twenty20.

I know the upcoming Australian tour is the most pivotal tour since the crisis days of the mid 1990s. The Black Caps don't have a winter programme and the next assignment is in Zimbabwe, so if young and impressionable cricket fans are left with a damp squib, they might not bother tuning in next time.

I hope I know that the Canterbury hegemony that has, to be frank, been allowed to dominate New Zealand cricket for too long is breaking down. Being a good player from Christchurch does not automatically make you better than a good player from, say, Palmerston North. The selectors might just be starting to understand that proximity to Lincoln should not equate to proximity to the Black Caps. On this theme, I think 2005 could be the year that independent thought, not something that has always been encouraged, could flourish.

I can't help but know that the blow-torch must be applied to other Black Caps batsmen in the way it was applied to Craig McMillan. Who, in the Black Caps top and middle-order test line-up, can say they've performed with enough consistency over the year to have a lifetime lease on their position? Just Stephen Fleming and Jacob Oram, that's who.

I'm sure I know that the 'but there is nobody better to replace them with' call will be used ad nauseam. This is defeatism at its worst. Why bother with domestic cricket and expensive academies and technical advisers and talent ID systems if you're never going to have the faith in them to replace something, or more particularly someone, that's not working?

I know that the Ashes will be the best cricketing contest of 2005 and, if the advance hype is to be believed, the century. England is a wrist-spinner away from being a model cricket side. There is daylight between them and the No 3 test team in the world. I know that because I saw Mark Richardson at Cirque du Soleil on New Year's Eve (slightly over-rated actually) and he told me so.

I pray that I know Shane Bond will be back to spearhead our bowling attack through to the 2007 World Cup. If not, then Dayle Hadlee discovers a tribe of subsistence-farming fast bowlers living in the Urerewas.

It will rain tomorrow.

So there, I hope I told you so.