New Zealand can win World Cup — just silence that inner pessimist

Being a North Sea fisherman is a tough job. So, too, being a mother of three children under five. Rabid cricket fan — ditto.

A difficult job is about to get even tougher with the start of the World Cup.

At the bottom of the world, ‘day’ matches start at bedtime, while the day-nighters finish over breakfast.

That is no way to maintain healthy relationships with your children and significant others.

Cricket fans are, by nature, prone to wild mood swings.

An unscientific survey of my cricket-watching brethren suggests they tend to feel either terrifically upbeat or utterly funereal about the Black Caps’ chances.

A lack of vitamin D and the associated decrease in dopamine will tilt the optimist versus pessimist scales dramatically in the latter’s favour.

Normally relatively well balanced and realistic (well, I would say that) when it comes to assessing the Black Caps, I have surprised myself by how bleakly I have viewed the team’s chances of matching the efforts of 2015.

I have hidden this pessimism behind a gossamer-thin veil of logic but lately I’ve started to wonder whether it is just my mind’s way of preparing for dark times (and by that I mean literally middle-of-the-night pitch blackness).

Where others are seeing a comforting half-full mug of hot chocolate, I’m seeing the half-empty dregs of a tepid cup of Bovril.

It’s not healthy, so in a form of selfadministered therapy, I’m making a conscious effort to turn this pessimism on its head. I’m ditching Charlie Brown for Pollyanna.

If the Black Caps are not stage-diving off the Lord’s balcony in seven weeks, it will be a shock.

New Zealand will win the World Cup. Here are just a few reasons why. This New Zealand team is incapable of consistently scoring the 320-350 totals needed to be competitive at this World Cup. Run rates have trended up at alarming levels but New Zealand does not need to engage in all that frippery as they have a beautifully balanced bowling attack capable of defending sub-300 scores. They’ve had four years to find an opening partner for Martin Guptill, but haven’t.

They’ve cleverly manipulated a horses-for-courses approach at the top of the batting order whereby, depending on conditions and opponents, they could opt for the crash-and-bash approach of Colin Munro or the more stoic reliability of Henry Nicholls.

Heaven only knows who their guy is who can maintain a near 200 strike rate for an extended period between overs 35 and 50, a la Glenn Maxwell, Jos Buttler and Andre Russell.

And don’t forget we have a revitalised Jimmy Neesham and the uncomplicated power hitting of Colin de Grandhomme to push the Black Caps to big totals when absolutely necessary. To mL atham has a busted finger

and Tom Blundell has not played an

ODI.

Blundell scored a test century on debut, so has proved he is a man for the big occasion.

When the ball doesn’t swing, New Zealand’s bowling attack can be a bit pedestrian.

Another important factor in the Black Caps’ favour is the tournament is in England with Duke balls.

It’s going to swing around corners, so a combination from Trent Boult, Matt Henry, Lockie Ferguson and Tim Southee are going to be, well, basically unplayable.

Brendon McCullum will be missed, as much for his follow-me leadership as his incendiary cameos.

Nobody steadies a ship like Kane Williamson, who is due a big World Cup.

The list of reasons for New Zealand’s inevitable demise success could go on, but let’s just say that if the Black Caps are not stage-diving off the Lord’s balcony into the arms of their gleeful supporters seven weeks from now, it will be a shock.

Just writing this has made me feel infinitely more jazzed about New Zealand’s prospects, so much so that I’ve reached high into the tree of verbs and plucked off “jazzed”, which I’m almost certain will never appear under my name again.

A French dude once wrote that optimism was “the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst”. Au contraire, it is pessimism that has proven obdurate. This optimism is liberating.

I look forward to spending darkened hours alone with just a paraffin lamp and Nasser Hussain’s dulcet tones for company.

These seven sun-starved weeks will be, in their own way, enlightening.