Aussie camp goes behind enemy lines

Five days out from the most anticipated Pool A match of the World Cup to date and Australia's cricketers have earned a glimpse of what it must be like to part of a Wallabies squad preparing to confront the fearsome All Blacks on their home patch.

Michael Clarke's Australia team have arrived in Auckland to tackle one of those curious anomalies of a tournament co-hosted by rival nations – an away-from-home match in a home World Cup.

In times not so long past, an Australia-New Zealand cricket fixture would have featured a clear distinction between favourite and underdog.

Of the 125 one-day internationals the neighbouring rivals have fought out over 40 years, a span that includes a famous underarm and the short-lived Chappell-Hadlee Trophy annual series, Australia has emerged winners more than twice as often as the Kiwis (84 wins to 35 with six no-results).

But as they arrived for training today among drizzling rain at the training ground adjacent to Eden Park's rugby cathedral – the pocket-sized playing field that will host Saturday's highly anticipated match – it was quickly apparent that balance has shifted.

The success of the Black Caps in winning their first three games of the tournament and fuelled by the authority of last Friday's victory over another historic heavyweight, England, has lifted expectation among cricket folk in the Shaky Isles to levels not seen since the 1992 World Cup.

When the tournament was last shared by the antipodean nations and the co-hosts upstaged their more fancied foes at the very same ground, a loss that began Allan Border's team's premature slide out of the running and New Zealand's surge to the semi-finals.

The buoyancy fostered by the explosive batting of Brendon McCullum and Kane Williamson, the peerless swing bowling of Trent Boult and Tim Southee and the experience and guile of 36-year-old Dan Vettori has a nation that would traditionally be focused on Super Rugby season salivating for cricket.

"Welcome to New Zealand" was the polite welcome Aaron Finch received from the Auckland media this afternoon before the questions turned to more topical matters.

How do your bowlers hope to douse McCullum's pyrothechnics?

How will you and your fellow top-order batsmen cope with the swing of Southee and Boult?

How do you manage to keep your emotions so securely in check out on the field?

As befitting an opening batsman in foreign conditions – Finch has played just one match on New Zealand soil, a cameo T20 semi-final appearance for the Auckland Aces in Wellington – he played unfailingly straight to the early posers.

"He (McCullum) is pretty brutal when he's on," Finch said of his fellow opener when asked how the Australians will cope when the Black Caps come out swinging with the bat.

"He's someone we'll have to worry about.

"When you've got Kane Williamson who is playing beautifully as well, he sets up their innings and they're able to bat around him so Brendon (McCullum) is a damaging player and he can take the game away from you if you bowl poorly to him in the first 10 overs.

"That's one thing we've got to make sure we're doing, is be right on from ball one otherwise you do get hurt.

"We've got a few plans so we'll wait and see how it goes."

As for the plans he and opening partner David Warner will employ when New Zealand are swinging the ball, Finch was equally sure-footed.

Particularly when asked to provide an opponent's assessment of Southee who will be hell-bent on capturing Finch's wicket when hostilities begin on Saturday.

"He bowled brilliantly," Finch said of Southee's match-defining 7-33 from nine overs against England.

"When you pitch it up and swing it like that with the new ball it's a huge factor and some days you swing it around corners and you swing it too far to get a nick.

"But everything went his way the other day.

"It's swing bowling, we've faced it before but the high pressure of a World Cup can do funny things.

"Their bowling at the top of the innings has been outstanding with Southee and Trent Boult and guys like that chipping in so myself and Davey Warner are going to have to play as well as we can to try and negate them."

But every now and then Finch would stray slightly from the diplomatic niceties of a newly arrived visitor and subtly make the point that his team too had accounted for England in the opening week of the tournament, and in equally emphatic fashion.

And that they were also undefeated entering the second week, albeit having played one less match and being denied the chance of a win over Bangladesh by Brisbane's tempestuous weather.

"I think all the pressure is going to be on New Zealand the way that they've been playing and (them playing) here in New Zealand as well," Finch said in a brave attempt to claim the underdog status traditionally the proprietorial right of the smaller nation.

Later on he noted, in response to further queries about the amount of swing the NZ bowlers have generated in favourable conditions: "When it swings it does give you a bit of freedom as a batter as well, because you can play the line and if you hit it in the middle good luck."

"If you don't, hopefully it misses your edge."

The compact dimensions of Eden Park and its peculiar angles courtesy of its primary use as a rectangular rugby field also became a talking point, as they will doubtless remain throughout the tournament with the ground to host a semi-final on March 24.

With straight and square boundaries measuring just 55m from the middle of the pitch, the redeveloped ground is one of the smallest in international cricket and comparable by Australian standards to Sydney's Stadium Australia where the short boundaries stretch just over 60m.

At grounds such as the MCG and the WACA, that distance is closer to 90m.

As such, the Australians devoted the last portion of today's three-hour training session to six-hitting practice for most of the top-order, a drill that saw security personnel ducking for cover and local glaziers flocking to the precinct.

The lengthy hit-out that finished under warm sunshine also saw all-rounder James Faulkner continue his recovery from a side injury sustained prior to the World Cup beginning.

Faulkner bowled in the nets off a reduced run-up and generated noticeable pace, although it remains doubtful he will be considered 100 per cent fit to bowl as well as bat in such a crucial match as Saturday's, which is destined to decide who finishes atop Pool A.

The Australians will have a day free from training tomorrow, while the Black Caps are expected to reconvene in Auckland during the day having been granted a few days of rest and recreation following last Friday's triumph over England.