KEY POINTS:
I'm picking the Black Caps to win the test series against the West Indies 1-0, despite their batting horrors in Brisbane and Adelaide.
It's shaping as a pretty even battle between the number seven and eight sides in world cricket, which is a bit of a sad proposition.
The West Indian captain Chris Gayle is their standout player and on his day can probably win games for them. He has shown that over the past few years, in tests and one-dayers.
With Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shivnarine Chanderpaul there, the West Indies should put reasonable scores on the board.
Ironically, it's their bowling which is the problem, something that was their great strength for a long time. They have been struggling to get people out and they've brought a few unknowns, so at the moment we'll have to take their attack with a grain of salt.
Both sides look pretty similar - both will make runs without threatening to post massive scores and then it will be a case of who can bowl the other out first. The big interest will be what impact the new New Zealand coach Andy Moles has although I suspect he will let Daniel Vettori kick things along at first.
Moles will want to get an idea of what the New Zealand players are all about, and there's no better way of doing that than spending a couple of weeks in a test dressing room.
Much has been made this week of the role of the support staff including a peer review process which involves sitting around the dressing room filling in forms. Without being privy to what does and doesn't happen in the dressing room on a day to day basis I would be surprised if things are as cut and dried as what has been revealed.
My guess though is that the senior players will be moving the culture away from this type of setup to one more befitting elite professional sport. Ultimately the senior players create the culture and I think the current group of Vettori, Brendon McCullum and Jacob Oram will have little difficulty in building a quality unit around themselves in time and given the opportunity.
Outside of the distractions the pressure will go on the New Zealand batters this week, and they just have to come up with the runs. As individuals they all need to be averaging between 30 and 40 - in itself quite a low benchmark which reflects the difficulties of batting in New Zealand conditions. Those who can't put up those sorts of numbers are just not good enough.
As a unit they will be very disappointed with what happened in Australia. They should have won respect over there on some good wickets and against a pretty average Australian attack.
The Aussies were not up to their normal calibre and their leading fast bowler Brett Lee looked a yard short of pace and never threatened the 150km/h mark as he has in the past.
Still, we should have enough to win this series, assuming we get the runs.
