McCullum: We know the slate is now clean

2015 World Cup

New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum is keen to stress to anyone that wants listen that, going into their opening clash of the World Cup, against Sri Lanka in Christchurch on Saturday, past performances counts for nothing.

The Black Caps have been in scintillating form over the last year or so, and can certainly take loads of confidence, and public support, into a tournament that they will be co-hosting with Australia.

Always going into global tournaments with the perennial dark-horse tag, this time New Zealand go in with much more than just an outside chance of lifting the famous trophy, in fact they are one of the favoured teams.

As captain, and going into his third showpiece event, McCullum feels that the current team does go in with much more belief than in previous years.

He said: "You always hoped things would work out well but did we genuinely believe it, maybe, maybe not. We believe we're a good team and we have a chance at this World Cup but there's some good teams around as well. We're going to need things to fall in our favour.

"It sits comfortably with me. If we get beat then we get beat, but if we play our best game we can walk away pretty satisfied and that will give us our best chance."

The skipper eluded to the nerves that is in the camp at the moment, but it is all positive nerves that hopefully, for all New Zealand fans, brings the best out of his team.

He added: "Everyone's excited. It's been a great build-up and all the management and coaching staff have done a brilliant job of getting us to this point and now it's a matter of how we seize the opportunities we get.

"We've been playing some good cricket but we know the slate is now clean."

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