You've got money on Neil Broom dominating the Champions Trophy?

Alright folks, as you may have read earlier in the week; we've got a strange Blackcaps squad for the Champions Trophy, selected by the strangest duo of them all #Lesson.

If you're a bit slow, I detailed the lack of wicket-keeper/batsman planning.

And then a general lack of planning in the rest of the Blackcaps Champions Trophy squad.

Gavin Larsen and Mike Hesson have officially made their respective beds and I sincerely hope that their futures depend on how the Blackcaps perform at the Champions Trophy. While the lack of foresight and any desire to develop the next wave of kiwi cricketers through consistent game time - or even just as many 'A' and Under 19 tours as they can squeeze in - is frustrating, the beds have been made and we now wait to see if Lesson are actually selection wizards.

I'm not hopeful and low key hope that changes are made, however that's offset by a desire to see the Blackcaps perform strongly at a major tournament. That desire is why I find many of these selection decisions so strange as it kinda looks like Lesson are setting this team up for failure.

But let's get practical and ponder the Blackcaps chances of success and how they could go about it. A quick look around the other squads named (I'll go in-depth closer to the tourny) so far doesn't fill me with any great hope. The first squad is South Africa and they've rolled out a very similar squad to the squad that toured Aotearoa a month or so ago.

Australia have their typically strong batting line up with James Pattinson, Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood forming a young quartet of seamers. The low key ODI beast John Hastings deserves plenty of love as well.

There are familiar names in the Bangladesh squad, enough funk to possibly upset a few teams, while Sri Lanka look to have the weakest squad.

England are steady with all the bases covered led by the all-round talents of Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes and David Willey.

Pakistan have weapons in Mohammad Amir, Ahmed Shehzad and Umar Akmal but a lot will depend on their veteran core of Sarfraz Ahmed, Mohammad Hafeez, Shoaib Malik and Wahab Riaz. Unpredictable is the best word to describe Pakistan and while they have dark horse potential, they could equally be crap.

India are being India, so we don't know about their squad. I guess they'll be pretty good too.
The eight best ODI teams in one place makes it hard to go with favourites as each squad looks fairly decent. If I had to suss some sort of rankings, given the English conditions and all I'd put South Africa and Australia at the top, closely followed by England with the kiwis in a chasing pack also featuring India and Pakistan. Bangladesh, then Sri Lanka.

In all honesty, much of our concerns regarding this Blackcaps squad centre around role-players or players who are more than likely, not going to play a whole lot. The core of this team is where any success will stem from as we've got our Golden Child Kane Williamson in all his glory (all four Golden Children (Williamson, Smith, Kohli, Root) will be in place!!), Ross Taylor, Trent Boult, Tim Southee and Martin Guptill. That's five blokes who we can genuinely label as world-class, which is a good starting point.

How will success look? Well the Blackcaps will need to be able to consistently score 250+ runs because it's hard to see them restricting other teams to less than 250 on a regular basis. The Blackcaps play Australia first, followed by games against England and Bangladesh so they'll desperately need Williamson, Taylor and Guptill to fire in those first two games or else the tournament is over. It's unrealistic to expect all three to fire, but against Australia and England, two of our three best batsmen will need to score 50+.

Obviously you need your best batsmen to score most of your runs, but I reckon this is more so the case for the kiwis because the gap between these three lads and the other batsmen is more alarming than that of other teams. What happens with the No.5 spot will play a major role as well, with Neil Broom likely to go up against Corey Anderson or Jimmy Neesham in competing to start there.

Neither Anderson or Neesham will fill our collective loins with confidence at No.5 and while Broom has done little to suggest otherwise as well, at least he's a true-blue experienced batsman. Broom can tonk it when needed but more importantly he can score runs all-around the wicket and work singles/twos during the middle stages; Broom has the best 'tonk and tinker' credentials.

South Africa and Australia have rather impressive bowling attacks, so we can probably expect Broom to get plenty of time at the crease. Broom averages 24.84 in ODI cricket, hasn't scored 50+ outside of Aotearoa but last winter, Broom went alright in one-day cricket for Derbyshire (playing in English conditions), averaging 59. That's a weird one though because Broom only hit one 50+ score in five innings (90) and had two not-outs, so he went alright, not fantastic. In County cricket for Derbyshire last winter, averaging 25.23 with just two 50+ scores in 22 innings.

So basically, who the fuck knows how Broom is going to step up at a major international tournament.

Boult's reputation will likely see other teams pay him plenty of respect and while we should hope that he picks up a few key wickets against Australia and England, he could well go wicket-less simply because those two teams will do plenty of homework on him. Our other leading seamer Southee averages a ho-hum 33.62 in ODI cricket but has experienced and if he's swinging it, watch out. Southee's awesome yorker will also be crucial, if he decides to use it.

Southee averages 34.30 in England and when you factor in that he averages 50.68 in Australia and 48 in South Africa, we can only hope that Southee has a career-defining tournament with a positive twist.

I'm not convinced that Australia or England will view the medium pace of Anderson, Neesham or Colin de Grandhomme as much of a threat. Mitchell McClenaghan is good for a few wickets, but the Blackcaps better have some runs on the board because he concedes 5.96rpo in ODI cricket.

What intrigues me the most about the Blackcaps bowling group are the two spinners in Mitchell Santner and Jeetan Patel. Traditional logic would suggest that only one spinner will be picked in English conditions, but I reckon these two will be more useful than playing a stock-standard medium pace seamer. Santner's 'all-round' ability also holds some value, only if he's batting at No.7-8 though.

Neither Santner or Patel is going to rip through Australia or England and they are more suited to the Daniel Vettori style than say, Ish Sodhi who is a wicket-taker. This could see them build pressure, allowing for Boult, Southee or McClenaghan to attack from the other end. Just as Williamson, Taylor and Guptill have to chip in with a few notable scores, I view Santner and Patel as being crucial with the ball and whether or not they can take 2+ wickets in either of those games will influence the game.

A major reason for optimism is that we do have some world-class cricketers and if they perform as such, the Blackcaps will be knee-deep in the contest. It's not crazy to think that Williamson, Taylor and Guptill will step up, ooze class and look unstoppable which could see the Blackcaps go deep into the tournament. These are three of the very best ODI batsmen in the world and they're on our team, so our expectations of their output need to be high.

Other teams have better depth though and the chances of those three combining forces to lead the Blackcaps to upset wins still feel slim. Do we have the batsmen around them who can then perform at such a level? I'm not so sure, nor am I overly confident that this bowling unit can roll through Australia or England, let alone restrict them to 200-250.

We're still waiting on India's squad, but I view Aotearoa as sitting behind Australia, South Africa and England based purely on the squads named. Pakistan would be an interesting comparison as the Blackcaps could catch fire like Pakistan could, they could also look rather average and fizzle in a horrible loss to Bangladesh to finish the tournament.

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