Five things we've learned from the Cup

After 23 of the scheduled 42 ICC World Cup group matches have been run and won – or in the case of Australia’s match against Bangladesh in Brisbane, washed away – and a clearer picture of who will figure in the knockout phase that follows has emerged.

With more than half the tournament finished there are also trends being forged, myths being exposed and predictions being rewritten.

So with the playing schedule enjoying a day off, it’s timely to examine five things we’ve learned from the World Cup’s initial fortnight.

New Zealand can win it 

Black Caps win World Cup classic

The team that most pundits had among their pre-tournament favourites have shown that not only can they consistently challenge world cricket’s heavyweights in the one-day format, they have a team that could genuinely win the nation’s first World Cup.

Undefeated in Pool A after four matches with matches against tournament strugglers Afghanistan and Bangladesh to come, the Black Caps appear destined to finish on top of their group with the likelihood of a quarter-final and semi-final on home soil.

They boast the event’s most potent new-ball attack – Trent Boult and Tim Southee – in Daniel Vettori a spinner who can attack and defend as required and the most consistently destructive opening batsman who is also a bold and innovative captain, Brendon McCullum.

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McCullum on the cut // Getty Images

But it is perhaps the benefits their draw has afforded them that also looms as the Black Caps greatest threats.

Having carried all before them to this point, New Zealand might struggle to maintain momentum with two matches in as many weeks against lower-ranked opponents, and then having to crank up their performances to better their previous best World Cup efforts that stalled at the semi-final stage.

However, given the manner in which they’ve negotiated the challenges thrown at them thus far it’s difficult to believe they’ll be losing any sleep over that.

It ain’t worth a thing if it ain’t got that swing

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Tim Southee celebrating one of his seven wickets against England // Getty Images

Amid all the speculation that proliferated in the months and years leading into this World Cup, the introduction of two new balls – one taken from either end by the bowling team – was the point of difference between previous Cups that generated the most discussion.

Two weeks into the event and fears that the pair of lacquered white balls would swing the game too heavily away from top-order batsmen – many of whom struggle in all forms when bowlers get it to deviate from the straight – have proved unfounded.

However, the list of the tournament’s leading wicket takers shows it’s those bowlers who can generate consistent, pronounced swing that have proved most effective while those whose principle velocity have not figured so prominently on historically fast, bouncy pitches.

Southee (13 wickets), Boult (10), the West Indies Jerome Taylor (9), Australia’s Mitchell Starc and England’s Steven Finn (8 each) shine prominently on that leaderboard while some of the world’s fastest bowlers – Mitchell Johnson, Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and the Black Caps Adam Milne do not.

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Imran Tahir is the leading spinner so far in the World Cup // Getty Images

Perhaps more surprising is the effectiveness of spin bowlers given the 100 per cent increase in the number of balls used and the reduction of fielders allowed in the deep trimmed from five to four was supposed to all but make them superfluous.

South African legspinner Imran Tahir (9 wickets), left-armer Vettori and Indian off-spinner Ravi Ashwin (eight apiece) have showed not only is there room for slow bowlers but they can prosper in many and varied guises.

For the record, Johnson and Steyn have five wickets between them from as many matches played.

It’s not how you start it’s how you finish

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David Miller (L) and JP Duminy went berserk against Zimbabwe in the final 10 overs // Getty Images

For a while there, the recipe for ODI success was to go hell for leather in the first 15 overs to set up a big score and then accelerate smoothly before launching again in the final five.

In the era of Twenty20 cricket where batsmen have honed the ability to hit the ball anywhere in the 360-degree radius and often beyond the perimeter fences, that strategy has been revised to devastating effect.

The aim for successful teams now is to bat first, set totals so impossibly large that the match is effectively done by the innings break, and then back your bowlers to keep the other mob to a few less.

To achieve that, wickets must be kept intact so that at least one set, specialist batsman is there at the end to unveil all the party tricks. Teams that lose wickets early through injudicious shot selection or the ability of swing bowlers will find themselves on the back foot.

Or at the very least, a hundred runs or so shy of where they want to be.

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The master of innovation - AB de Villiers // Getty Images

The alterations to the fielding restrictions have not only made boundaries more difficult to defend. The clustering of those four outfielders can telegraph to a half-aware batsman where the bowler is aiming to pitch.

Which is why AB de Villiers and his ilk can note the cordon of outriders scattered along the off-side rope, confidently guess (or premeditate in the lexicon of the modern player) the bowler will aim wide and full outside off and throw himself in that region while scooping the ball behind square.

If you do it often enough, your team will score in excess of 400 and you will be duly crowned the game’s most destructive, talented cricketer.

For all its unpredictability there’s few boilovers

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There was no luck of the Irish in Ireland's upset win over the West Indies // Getty Images

The expansion of the World Cup to 14 competing nations coupled with the semi-regular aberrations that limited-overs is supposed to throw up meant that there was supposed to be a few boilovers that added spice to the group stages of the tournament.

So far, unless you label England’s failure to get on the board in matches against fellow Test nations and Australia’s defeat at the hands of a marauding New Zealand as unforeseen, the games have gone pretty much according to script.

The only victory of an associate nation over an incumbent member of the Test match club was Ireland’s heroic chase in which they ran down the West Indies, but given their antecedents in previous global tournaments and the substance of Ireland’s cricket infrastructure it was not a genuine shock.

Perhaps only to those who fondly remember the position of dominance the West Indies once held as the winners of the inaugural two World Cup competitions.

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Shaiman Anwar has been a star for the United Arab Emirates // Getty Images

And when the Irish nervelessly chased down the UAE’s tally after early stumbles that tested the depth and the temperament of their lower-order, they were installed as the one non-Test team with a genuine chance of making the knockout phase

Apart from that, Scotland and the UAE remain winless, Afghanistan made history with a memorable victory over the Scots, Test battlers Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are on the board against fellow battlers Afghanistan and the UAE respectively.

And the semi-final stages loom as a showdown between heavyweights India, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. Unless the second half of the group stage runs off the rails.

Big names win key games

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Virat Kohli stood up when it mattered against fierce rivals Pakistan // Getty Images

For all the guessing and intrigue that goes into the naming of each competing nation’s initial 30-man squad (less for those countries with not that many international-standard cricketers) and then the whittling down to the final 15, the chances of a new star being born in World Cup competition are slim.

Rather, it is the acknowledged match-winners who invariably shine on the biggest stage, and it’s the team whose stars shine brightest when the heat is applied that progress deepest into the tournament.

Witness AB de Villiers when South Africa needed to bounce back emphatically from their loss to India and made the West Indies’ bowlers pay in the most spectacular manner.

See Virat Kohli in the wake of his team’s winless Australia tour to that point will himself to a century in the defending champions’ opening game, the hugely scrutinised and fervently supported clash with Pakistan in Adelaide.

Even Chris Gayle, roundly criticised for his lack of runs over such a long period until he made a pointed statement as well as World Cup history by becoming the first batsman to score a double-hundred in the event’s 40-year history.

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Gayle after belting the first double-hundred in World Cups // Getty Images

New Zealand’s opening bowlers Boult and Southee were expected to deliver in conditions they knew and were likely to exploit, but few anticipated they would so completely the Australia and England batting line-ups respectively.

And Australia’s Mitchell Starc, whose reputation as his team’s premier one-day bowler had grown over the past year, almost singlehandedly pulled off one of the great World Cup steals in Auckland with a performance that will have every international batsman shifting nervously in their viewing room chair.

With the even bigger matches to kick off on March 18 when the knockout phase begins, the game’s big names have the opportunity to install themselves alongside Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Aravinda de Silva, Shane Warne, Ricky Ponting and Adam Gilchrist as those who dazzled when the light burned brightest.