Australia bowl first against New Zealand

That trend will continue after captain Steve Smith confirmed Shaun Marsh will open with David Warner in his side’s first ODI against New Zealand in Auckland on Wednesday.

Some regard the Chappell-Hadlee ODI series that starts today as a tune-up for the trans-Tasman Test series that follows. A brilliant Craig McMillan century, backed up by big hitting from Brendon McCullum, took New Zealand to 350 against Australia in Hamilton nine years ago.

The complication is that Khawaja needs match practice for the upcoming two-Test series, when Australia will be bidding to regain the No. 1 world ranking.

“We scored 300 on every occasion in the recent one-day series (against India) at home”.

“No doubt he’d be frustrated”.

When asked if the series against New Zealand will act as a build-up for the multi-team event in India in March 2016, Faulkner chose not to look too far, stressing on the importance of taking it one game at a time. He’s hitting the ball extremely well but the one-day side is a tough side to break into.

“And then with the T20s, what were are seeing is mixing and matching at the moment, everyone’s having a game to see where we are at with this format – looking back at the last 12 months we only played one T20 game”.

Australian squad: Shaun Marsh, David Warner, Steve Smith (capt), George Bailey, Glenn Maxwell, Mitch Marsh, Matthew Wade, James Faulkner, John Hastings, Kane Richardson, Josh Hazlewood. We’re the current world champions, we’re playing some very good one-day cricket.

“There’s always going to be a few anxieties heading into a big series”, he said.

Black Caps skipper Brendon McCullum was happy with the toss result, indicating he would have batted first anyway.

“They [conditions] are a little bit different in New Zealand, the ball tends to swing around for a lot longer, you do have to give yourself extra time to get in”, Smith said.

“It’s just how you can settle yourself as quickly as possible and that will certainly be the message we’ll be stressing”.

The backdrop of the entire three-ODI, two-Test visit from the Australians is Smith’s opposite number, McCullum, who begins his farewell tour with this fixture.

Josh Hazlewood, who has been sidelined for a while, returns to lead a four-pronged pace attack with no room for leg-spinner Adam Zampa. “It’s up to us to make that not happen”.