Have New Zealand flattered to deceive with their first-up victory over Sri Lanka at Sharjah?

By taking their victory by 11 runs, this despite losing five wickets for nine runs to the one-man Sri Lankan demolition squad that is Muttiah Muralitharan, the New Zealanders have extended their run of successes at Sharjah over the Sri Lankans to 6-1, with one tied.

This suggests a degree of dominance over the highly-ranked Sri Lankans, but in effect most of the results were achieved a good time ago.

The real scorecard at all venues in their most recent contests has Sri Lanka leading New Zealand 8-3.

And that is what makes last night's success all the more important for New Zealand.

The side is now in World Cup countdown mode and every step along the way is another step toward ensuring strategies are in place to counter whatever situations arrive during the World Cup.

Clearly the Muralitharan factor needs some tweaking. In 23 ODIs against New Zealand, he has taken 39 of his 275 ODI wickets at an economy rate of 3.64.

But on last night's performance his economy rate was down to 0.9!

With one more game, and hopefully two, against Sri Lanka in the tournament, there is a need to go some way down the road towards uncovering the mischievousness of his bowling. For a team that managed to unmask Shane Warne during the last summer, there is surely some method whereby Muralitharan's effect can be negated.

New Zealand are not alone in their inability to get on top of him, but having the confidence to cope with him goes a long way towards ensuring he doesn't hold the whip hand in the World Cup final, and that is how every opponent must be viewed now.

Considering that New Zealand went into the match under-strength, without Chris Cairns, and latterly without Andre Adams, the effort to win the game had to be admired. Adams was hit in the jaw in pre-match training and is not expected to be able to play tomorrow night's game against Pakistan either.

This is a good Sri Lankan unit which has had the wood over New Zealand in recent years so the ability to fight back is encouraging. No one bowler dominated the Sri Lankan innings which suggested some outstanding teamwork to achieve the win.

From New Zealand's point of view, there had to be huge encouragement from Jacob Oram's return to international matchplay. Batting at No 8, his 46 off 33 balls again proved crucial in ensuring Sri Lanka would have a sizeable total to chase. And with the ball he took one for 31 from 7.1 overs. This is significant for New Zealand. Oram's all-round abilities, including his fielding, coupled with Adams' qualities, blended in with what Cairns has to offer, along with Chris Harris, Nathan Astle and Craig McMillan, gives New Zealand some outstanding options. To have all these players firing is exciting, and would make the side very competitive in any World Cup scenario.

It was interesting that Chris Nevin was the victim of the law which does not allow a television umpire to intercede if a player has clearly not hit the ball. When a catch was claimed off Nevin the enquiry from the umpire on the ground only asked if the 'catch' had been held. The replay showed his bat was well away from the ball, but the third umpire could only comment on the query.

With that in mind it is not surprising that Mathew Sinclair stood his ground in the face of umpire Srinivas Venkataraghavan's decision he had been caught. Sinclair claimed the ball was off his arm, and Venkat discussed the matter with Sanath Jayasuriya and changed his decision.

New Zealand has started to up its consistency rate in ODIs, and in the calendar year 2002, it has won eight of 16 ODIs which is a success ratio of 50% - not insignificant considering Australia, South Africa and Sri Lanka must all be genuine contenders for the World Cup. When compared to New Zealand's all-time success rate of only 43%, that is a start.

Lifting both statistics even higher by year's end will be a significant factor for confidence when embarking for South Africa next January.

© CricInfo