We're nearing Aotearoa's first game of the 2017 Champions Trophy and after winning that tri-series thing, the kiwis played the first of two warm-up fixtures before their tournament gets underway on Friday evening against Australia. The Blackcaps lost to India in a game that was largely influenced by the homies Duckworth and Lewis, they'll play against Sri Lanka Tuesday evening.

With their squad for the CT together, Aotearoa rolled out a team that could resemble their strongest team for the opening game. Ross Taylor was absent, which saw Corey Anderson promoted to No.5 and given they put up a fairly lacklustre effort with the bat besides Luke Ronchi's 66 (104.76sr) and Jimmy Neesham's 46* (97.87sr), I'm not liking the plethora of all-rounders, resulting in a lack of pure batting.

This is complex as Anderson didn't bowl and I'm not convinced that he'll be a major factor with the ball during this tournament. Certainly not as much as Colin de Grandhomme, Mitchell Santner or Neesham. Ronchi and Neesham were the only batsmen to score over 20 runs, with Indian seamers Mohammaed Shami and Bhuvneshwar Kumar taking 3 wickets each.

It's kinda exciting to have Anderson, Santner, Neesham and de Grandhomme in the same team as they can all smack a boundary while offering 5th, 6th and 7th bowling options. The balance offered by having three of those four in the team is also beneficial and having all four play, allowed for Adam Milne, Tim Southee, Trent Boult and Jeetan Patel to form the bowling attack.

That's awesome, exciting and if those all-rounders fire then Aotearoa could beat Australia and England. Awesome and exciting to a point though as they have all shown equal parts of limitations and potential, which then leads to what I view as the most intriguing selection decision now; which of the four makes way for Taylor.

Ranking the four of them is difficult because Anderson is probably the best No.6 batsman option, while Santner offers a crucial spin element, Neesham's scored the most runs of the four recently and de Grandhomme is best suited to finishing an innings off. With Broom batting No.5 and Anderson No.6, you can only really fit in one more which for me comes down to Santner vs Neesham. Funk could come if de Grandhomme is picked as the third seamer over Milne or McClenaghan.

nice to see @ronchi04 pic.twitter.com/iIbGj8JkMo
— Shay Patel (@shayzpatel) May 28, 2017

At this stage, we're assuming that Martin Guptill and Ronchi will open the innings. Ronchi's knock here doesn't change anything and the ploy to open with two batsmen who will try to smack it around with Williamson and Taylor as the back up, is similar to the ploy to play as many all-rounders as possible. These ploys have logic behind them, but are very dangerous and I just don't view the players involved as being good enough to do that job.

Ronchi's hit or miss, while the all-rounders aren't world-class with bat and ball.

Again, Ronchi has to be given the wicket-keeping/openers job because he's done all the preparation. Mentally prepare yourselves for this and all we can do is pray to the stars, God, Jah, Allah and Buddha that Ronchi can play two innings (of the three in pool-play) where he hits over 40 with a strike-rate over 100.

Neither Santner or Patel got to bowl in the 26 overs of India's innings. Southee and Boult took a wicket each, conceding 5.28rpo and 4.85rpo respectively while Neesham's 1/11 @ 3.66rpo was better than Milne and de Grandhomme who went without a wicket @ 5rpo and 4.40rpo.

The major question for the bowling attack is whether we've got the bowlers to steam-roll England or Australia, or restrict their run-scoring. Either case would ideally result in the opposition scoring under 250, preferably under 200. This is also where things get weird with the all-rounders because we need as many bowling weapons as possible, not a bowling attacking made up of mediocre bowling all-rounders.

Mitchell McClenaghan notoriously takes wickets and I want him in there, yet the decision to pick McClenaghan and Milne comes down to picking a pure bowler vs an all-rounder. Would you rather have Milne and McClenaghan, or Milne/McClenaghan and Neesham/de Grandhomme? That questions becomes tricky when pondering the 'batting' offered by the all-rounders, although I would suggest that Milne, Patel and McClenaghan can all hit 20 off 10 like the all-rounders can.

Don't buzz at all about what happens in the next warm-up game against Sri Lanka, I'll mainly be concerned about the team that is selected. Taylor should come back in and McClenaghan needs a game, so how the team is shuffled will be very interesting. It feels as though Aotearoa is walking a tight-rope of balance where the balance offered by all-rounders, is a bit of an illusion at the moment.

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