No one has talked about them being favorites, nor has anyone talked about them being walkovers. I believe the Kiwis have it in them to be contenders for the ICC World Twenty20 title, while England stand no chance in hell.

Here are my reasons why.

1. New Zealand have always done well in ICC branded tournaments; World Cups especially. The semi finals are a given whenever the Kiwis start such a competition.
   
   England on the other hand will make it an achievement if they get to the Super 8s. They haven't gone too far in any of the ICC tournaments since 1992.
   
   
2. England are still learning the art of playing ODIs. It will take them some time to get their focus on an even more abridged version of the game.
   
   For New Zealand though, it comes naturally - ODIs, T20s, piece of cake.
   
   
3. In Ross Taylor, Jesse Ryder, Brendon McCullum, and Daniel Vettori, the Kiwis have 4 destructive players who on their day can single handedly win a 20-20 game.
   
   Besides KP, England don't really have anyone who can do the same.
   
   
4. While Andy Moles is talking about all the thought that has gone into New Zealand's preparations for the T20 world cup; Andy Flower is busy wondering why his team doesn't have a Flintoff, why he's working with a 3rd captain in 6 months, and why his team is so poor at T20.
   
   
5. England first have to contend with Pakistan and the Netherlands; if they get past them, then they have the small task of getting past India, Australia, and South Africa if they want to get to the semis.
   
   Yeah, doesn't look likely, does it?
   
   For New Zealand however, it looks like a cakewalk with Scotland and South Africa first, and then Pakistan, West Indies / Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh / Ireland next.
   
   As I said, piece of cake!

New Zealand will always be tough competition in a tournament like the 20-20 world cup, but they need something more than that to actually win the title. Maybe this is their time in favorable English conditions.

For England, even the favorable home conditions won't be of any help!

Are they seriously blind?

The video is out there for everyone to see.

So what are Ponting and Haddin smoking?

I mean seriously.

Do they not see what happened? Do they really think the world is blind?

Don't they realise what this is doing to their credibility?

Not that Ponting had much of it anyway, but with the kind of statements he's making, what is he trying to prove?

And why haven't the match officials taken any action?

Rashid Latif got banned for 5 matches and stripped of the captaincy for doing something similar.

India would have been threatening to cancel the tour if it were there wicket keeper who had done something like that.

If it were a subcontinental player, the Australia and English media would have been full of remarks about cheating.

I can't believe that Haddin can actually come out and say that Vettori's claims are poor and low.

How can he do that?

We all saw his reaction after the team was celebrating. Its obvious that he knew what happened. So what does he think of the public?

And whats all this with Ponting claiming that Vettori apologised?

The Aussies are crumbling and how.

Sad, just sad.

Haddin needs to be banned and Ponting, while away on his leave, needs to be told to shut up.

If someone ever asked me who the most intelligent people in cricket are, I would put Daniel Vettori up there on the list. Not only does he look professorial, his skill, acumen, and achievements warrant such accolades.

However, he has seriously damaged his credentials today in my eyes. Here's what he had to say after the end of the 1st Test against the Windies:

[Vettori] also proposed only one referral per team per innings instead of the three being used in the New Zealand-West Indies series. "What's happening a little bit is the 50-50 ones are coming into play and I don't think that's what it was invented for," Vettori told NZPA.

...

"If you look at it [the Flynn replay], you can see it's out but is that the reason it was brought in ... to decide on such a fine-line decision?" asked Vettori. "The premise of cricket is the batsman always gets the benefit of the doubt and I think you want to still keep that part of the game in." [LINK]

So the referral system is helping umpires make correct decisions, but you're not happy with that? You want the benefit of doubt to remain a part of the game, when there exists a pretty straightforward process to reduce it drastically?

Strange comments really. Not sure why players are so reluctant to embrace this system. And I like how these players use the diminished role of the on-field umpires as their cop-out. Uhhh...hello??? The third umpire is not a backup umpire - he's an integral part of the game. If he gets a bit more responsibility, what's wrong in that?

My biggest concern is the time factor. But so far I have seen little or no complaints about the time factor by the players, umpires, or analysts.

Bad decisions have been extremely costly to teams in the past, and that's why the referral system is a good idea. I'm disappointed that someone like Vettori is acting quite ignorant about the whole thing.

With the final ODI between England and New Zealand just a few hours away my mind is still on the controversary from the 4th ODI. Just to refresh everybody's memory, with the game hanging in the balance and New Zealand in the midst of a fight back 8th wicket partnership the spirit of the game came into question.

England's fast bowler Ryan Sidebottom collided with New Zealand's batsman Grant Elliot and knocked him to the ground. With Elliot flattened, Bell picked up the ball and ran Elliot out. After some moments of confusion and indecision England's captain Collingwood was asked by the umpires if he would like to uphold his appeal; Collingwood made the decision to still appeal for the runout thus tilting the match to his side's favor. The New Zealand dressing room erupted understandably so as this seemed completely against the spirit of the game. Was it? Had Collingwood crossed the fairplay and decency limits of the game?

My initial reaction and thought, more than likely purely emotional, was that Collingwood and England had violated the spirit of the game and crossed cricket's line of decency. With the batsman being flattened by a collision with your bowler it just seemed wrong not to call the batsman back. It just would have been the right thing to do to call Elliot back.

But then one has to contemplate on the fact that there have been many runouts resulting from an incidental collision between the bowler and the batsman. Sidebottom was going for the ball and did not knock Elliot down on purpose. So were Collingwood and England okay to appeal and get Elliot to take the angry walk back to the dressing room?

I am a huge fan of good sportsman spirit and because of that I think the right thing to do was to call Elliot back; actually the best thing to do would have been not to appeal in the first place. Actually, why is nobody talking about Bell throwing the ball to get the runout - if he did not throw the ball to run Elliot out then there would be no controversary!

In the end it was poetic justice with New Zealand winning on the last ball. Everybody made the right statements after the match - Collingwood saying he should have called Elliot back and Vettori saying that his team overreacted. I cannot help but feel that New Zealand's victory helped save the spirit of game and preserve the sport from being tarnished.

Smith displaced Tendulkar for the top spot in the ICC ODI Batsman rankings. Ponting, M Yousuf and Hayden round up the top 5. The age old saying of nothing beats experience is demonstrated in the ODI batsman rankings.

Vettori is on top of the ODI rankings for bowlers with Bracken, Bond, Vaas and Mills completing the top 5. 3 of the top 5 ODI ranked bowlers are Kiwis.

Australia and New Zealand are definitely dominating the ICC ODI rankings. The rankings are definitely a good way of determining current form - though I would like to see some revisions to the rankings. This will have to be a later post when I have constructed exactly what I would like to see changed :-)

I will leave by saying that ICC should also publish their ICC ODI Umpire Rankings! :-)

Andrew Symonds and Yuvraj Singh joined Dhoni and Sachin in the millionnaires club as Symonds was picked up by Hyderabad for $1.35 million. Big bucks being thrown around here. Looks like Symmos spat with Bhajji and the whole racism row didn't have much of an impact on his value. Symonds joins team mate Adam Gilchrist in the Hyderabad Team. Deccan Chronicle have now spent over $2 million on the two Australians.

The traditional summer test series of the Southern Hemisphere get underway tomorrow with Sri Lanka taking on Australia and New Zealand taking on South Africa. It is interesting to note that the top 4 bowlers in the ICC LG Top Test Bowlers list, namely Muralitharan, Makhaya Ntini, Shane Bond, and Stuart Clark would be involved in the action starting tomorrow. How these ratings change after the 2 tests in each series, would be interesting to note.