Australia on the other hand were excellent, every bit as convincing as New Zealand were earlier in the day.
Finch and Warner will ensure lively starts and Glenn Maxwell, Mitchell Marsh and Brad Haddin high-octane finishes. The Mitchells, Starc, Johnson and Marsh, offer pace and penetration and they're obviously pretty pleased with their fielding, judging by the amount of times players come from far and wide to pat bottoms.
The early rounds of the World Cup were always going to have an element of a phony-war about them, but the opening day has at least established one thing: 300-plus scores batting first should be the norm.
New Zealand got things off to a rollicking start with 331-6 in Christchurch and last night Australia posted 342-9 on the vast expanse of turf that is the MCG.
They got there largely thanks to Finch (and by association Woakes), who stroked 135 off 128 balls.
He received able support from stand-in skipper George Bailey (55), a man so previously out of touch, his role could be likened to a Davis Cup non-playing captain. The irony is his return to form is unlikely to be rewarded with future selection as he is still the most likely to make way when Michael Clarke comes back into the team.
One player who won't be on the outer is Glenn 'The Big Show' Maxwell. He typically mixed the brutal with the outrageous on his way to 66 off 40 balls. In a cute curiosity, he was also the second victim in possibly the world's worst hat-trick, taken by Steve Finn in the last over of the innings.
England never looked remotely capable of chasing down the target.
There will be various factors that come into play when establishing what is or isn't a realistic chase, including size of the ground, state of the wicket and quality of the opposition.
What does seem certain is this will be the highest-scoring World Cup of them all. New rules introduced in 2012 means outside power-plays, you can only have four, not five, fielders outside the circle, the bats are bigger (yet lighter) and the boundaries shorter.
But there is more to the run feasts than that.
Batsmen have got more innovative and a lot braver, not so much from a physical point of view - although it takes real courage to attempt a scoop shot against bowlers going at more than 140 clicks - but mentally. They're no longer shackled by an obsession with their averages; they realise that a good average is only meaningful if it is allied to a healthy strike rate.
In short, they're not scared of getting out and it is hard to argue against the fact that makes the game a greater spectacle. That's why virtually all of the MCG's 87,000 seats were occupied last night.
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