KEY POINTS:
All the talk suggests England have only to turn up, play moderately well, and they'll walk off with the test series against New Zealand.
I beg to differ. Plenty of good teams have visited New Zealand in the last couple of decades and come unstuck.
England are a good side, not an outstanding one. Their expected top six batsmen all average over 40 in tests. Ignore that. It's what they do over the next three weeks in conditions New Zealand know and appreciate, that matters.
During the one-dayers, England were revealed as a side whose bowling was largely impotent and whose catching was dreadful.
Sure, key players have arrived to bolster the test set-up. They will be better for that but New Zealand should not approach the first test in Hamilton next Wednesday with any trepidation.
They must play to their strengths and if their key players - Brendon McCullum, Daniel Vettori and Jacob Oram - fire they should do well. If not, they could be well off the pace.
What will the selectors come up with when the team is named today? A couple of areas must be sorted out - third seamer and the batting order.
Given a choice of Mark Gillespie and Iain O'Brien, I'd plump for Gillespie. To win a test, New Zealand need 20 wickets. Gillespie, providing he's fit, is more likely to get a few of them than O'Brien, who appeals to me as a hard worker but lacking a cutting edge. Gillespie might concede more runs, but that's a trade-off you live with if he picks up a few wickets.
Jamie How will open with Matthew Bell, Stephen Fleming is New Zealand's best batsman and should be at No 4, which is the best spot to bat in.
Oram will be at No 6 which leaves Peter Fulton, Mathew Sinclair and Ross Taylor vying for No 3 and No 5.
Forget a bolter. It won't happen, although once he's back from Malaysia and the under-19 World Cup, I'd be looking hard at young swing bowler Tim Southee.
He's shown he can cut it at international level and I'd have him in the national side sooner rather than later.
If it was my choice, I'd have Sinclair at No 3, Taylor at No 5 and Fulton out. He's simply out of form. Better that he go back to Canterbury and find it in the State Championship, especially if he is in the frame to tour England.
I'd like to see Taylor get another chance. He's an exciting talent.
With Sinclair, you know what you'll get. He's unlikely to improve much at this stage of his career but he has made runs at No 3 in the past. Sinclair must feel as if a black cloud is never far from him, such is the propensity for the selectors to drop him. Sinclair knows his is the first name, rightly or wrongly, to come up for discussion if someone is to be dumped. He is playing largely the same way he did five years ago. I'm fairly neutral on him, but this is not a time to pluck a new face and Fulton hasn't got the runs.
My XII for Hamilton is Matthew Bell, Jamie How, Mathew Sinclair, Stephen Fleming, Ross Taylor, Jacob Oram, Brendon McCullum, Daniel Vettori, Kyle Mills, Jeetan Patel, Mark Gillespie, Chris Martin.
* What a bizarre month it's been for Jesse Ryder. I've never seen anything like it.
First he gets picked for New Zealand, and proves the critics, myself included, wrong by doing better than even his keenest fans hoped.
He helps New Zealand win the ODI series against England and then in the space of 24 hours lurches into a meltdown of supernova proportions. I must admit I'd assumed he had stopped drinking, given his run-scoring and the fact that he was presumably in good hands. That's one assumption out the window.
For me, Ryder's biggest issue will be regaining the trust of his teammates who had backed him to the hilt and will be feeling pretty let down.
His early morning accident after the match is one thing; being out on the drink until 1.30am the night before the crucial fifth ODI in Christchurch is far more serious and smacks of a young man with no concept of where his actions could lead.
Players have zero tolerance for this sort of thing as their livelihoods often depend on their teammates doing the business for them. The senior guys will be horrified at a bloke who's been around for five games proclaiming that he is "New Zealand cricket".
From NZC's perspective you would imagine he's had his one warning.
The bottom line is it's down to Ryder. He's 23; a grown man - he must be accountable for his actions.
Will he be back? That's entirely up to Jesse Ryder.
