This hurts me more to write than it hurts you to read but I think Australia are going to win the World Cup.
"Who is going to win?", is the question I have been asked most of late. While I would love to say New Zealand, I just can't. There'sno doubt our lads are capable but there's just something, as there always is, about those damn Aussies.
After hearing the Minister for Sport in South Africa tell the Proteas not to come home "a bunch of losers", I immediately wrote them off. Maybe South Africans work differently to us but, if there is one guaranteed way to make choker choke, it's to add a little pressure. Their civic sending off probably meant their plane departed way overweight with the extra load they are now carrying on their backs. Good luck, boys, dealing with that weight of expectation. Expectation is the worst pressure of all.
Australians expect their team to win because they know they always have a good team but, rather than demand success, they believe they will succeed. The atmosphere for other teams in Australia will be suffocating and the Aussies, all of them - fans, media, commentators and players - will swarm.
The Australian cricketers play with belief, something our players now possess. But could the Aussies' belief be more unwavering than ours? The expectation our lads now experience is a new phenomenon for New Zealand cricketers and I'm unsure of how they will react.
If you want a reason more solid than this mental mumbo-jumbo, then look at the quality of their playing personnel. Recently, the Australians have been just as dominant against reasonable opposition as the Black Caps.
Aaron Finch and David Warner are the best opening pair at the Cup, although Martin Guptill and Brendon McCullum aren't far behind.
Then you have a classy middle order with Steve Smith, George Bailey and Michael Clarke. Not only Clarke but a Clarke batting to prove a point. This, I believe, is when he's at his best.
The allrounders scare me because they have shown they are able to turn a game with their X-factor. Glenn Maxwell is known as The Big Show and, unfortunately, lives up to it more than I would like. The potential loss of James Faulkner is massive for them but they gain Mitchell Johnson.
The thing about their bowling is its aggression. Wickets are the new currency over economy rates and Johnson, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood provide them.
The Australian team have a lot in their favour. Man for man, I don't see a massive difference between the Black Caps and Australia but the key difference is that the Aussies have won the World Cup before.
There's no doubt they believe they will win it again.
