Ross Taylor has faced only 8.1 overs at the World Cup. Photo / Brett Phibbs
New Zealand coach Mike Hesson faces a selection conundrum leading into what should be New Zealand's least challenging assignment of Cricket World Cup pool play - Afghanistan.
If he had a sheet of paper in front of him now, it might look like this:
Bowling - tick
Fielding - tick
Batting - ?
Truth is, New Zealand's batting is in a bit of a bind, having been exposed by Australia's Mitchell Starc. If it was a one-off, you'd let it pass, but they also faltered against Scotland in Dunedin and a number of the top eight are desperately short of runs and time in the middle.
Take Brendon McCullum and Kane Williamson out of the equation and you're left with a line-up whose confidence seems to be eroding by the game. Between them they have scored 356 of New Zealand's 754 runs to date. That's 47.21 per cent of their team's runs.
The rest of the top eight have mustered 355. Extras (42), have contributed more to New Zealand's aggregate than Ross Taylor and Daniel Vettori combined. There has been only one half-century among them, that being Corey Anderson's powerful 75 against Sri Lanka.
Hesson will reason that the lack of input is due, in many respects, to the team's spectacular success in the field.
Three times in succession the opposition have batted first and made paltry totals, meaning that even if New Zealand's order were all in the form of their lives, there hasn't been a lot of runs to share around.
New Zealand haven't had the chance for a decent bat since the first day of the tournament, when they posted an impressive 331 against a familiar attack in Sri Lanka.
Luke Ronchi, an important free-scoring cog at No7, has faced the equivalent of six overs; Vettori, one spot lower in the order, just seven balls. Taylor has faced 8.1 overs and Grant Elliott 11 overs worth of deliveries. It is difficult to get a true gauge of form with such small sample sizes.
Winning is a cure-all, but the brains trust will want their batsmen -- particularly Taylor, for so long the fulcrum of the order -- to be feeling better about their games heading into the quarter-finals.
The talk is that Tom Latham, Kyle Mills, Mitchell McClenaghan and Nathan McCullum will get a run against either Afghanistan or Bangladesh. But can they actually afford to play Latham?
The gaps between games now are so big it would be a risk to rest your in-form players, because there's a danger you play them out of form due to inactivity, but Brendon McCullum's bruised forearm could provide them with the excuse.
If you played Latham at No5 instead of Elliott, who had been in great pre-World Cup form, you're robbing the Wellingtonian of his best chance to get into the tournament.
New Zealand will almost certainly top Pool A after their nerve-shredding win against Australia at Eden Park, but it's what they do in the next couple of weeks that will determine their readiness for knockout games against tough opposition.
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The White Ferns have remarkably reached the final.