Owing to the regional rivalry between Australia and New Zealand, an exhilarating contest is on the cards today.

By Firdose Moonda

Perhaps more captains should adopt the Ricky Ponting approach to the game.

"I'm not a huge cricket watcher, particularly when I've got a day off," the Australia captain confessed ahead of the ICC Champions Trophy final in Centurion. Not a cricket watcher? Is he just as bored with one-day cricket as the rest of the world seems to be? Or is he fooling us all into thinking he has only paid the second semi-final peripheral attention, when in fact he has a dossier on it?

The Australians will be hoping so, because Ponting's pre match observations don't tell us anything we hadn't figured out about New Zealand already. "They know how to play to their strengths and they are very disciplined. They have certainly upset a few teams. No one even gave them a shot against Pakistan."

In one word: underdogs. As apparent as that is, perhaps Ponting is only now relating to the small fry status because his team have faced something similar. While no one can call Australia the little guys when it comes to cricket, "it's probably the first time in a while that we have come in not ranked number one, we were around third or fourth. The experts probably expected us to finish around there as well."

Got questions about your favourite team in the ICC Champions Trophy? Ask Wasim Akram. Send in your queries to fanspeak@espnstar.co.in

That perception allowed Australia to slip under the radar and concentrate on their performance, without being bombarded with rankings, labels and favourites tags. Australia just observed as India and South Africa ended up being forced to explain how they plummeted from their perches and found themselves prematurely exiting the tournament. By contrast, Australia have - for the first time - had to explain how they went from sneaking into the tournament, virtually unnoticed, to propelling themselves to yet another ICC tournament final.

"We've been playing some really good one day cricket and have been building up for the big moments. With England making the semi-final, it shows how good the standard of cricket we had to play against them was to beat them (6-1 in the one day series in England). We've been on the right track from there," explained Ponting. The captain also thinks the team go into the final having ironed out any issues they had in their game. "The one glitch on our radar was against Pakistan with our batting but we sorted that out against England in the semi-final."

As a result, Ponting believes the end of the ICC Champions Trophy will be a good time to assess where the team is and how it has developed over the last five months. "If we win, it will sum up a really good period for Australian cricket. We've introduced a lot of new players in this time and those guys have now played in several games and we are focused on building the team from that. "

Ponting didn't say how they would measure their success if they didn't emerge victorious from the final. Perhaps that thought refuses to cross his mind. That's not to say Ponting hasn't thought about the opposition at all. Apart from his earlier observation, he added that New Zealand's "record in these tournaments over the past 10 or 15 years speaks for themselves. They usually do well." New Zealand have reached nine semi finals in ICC competitions, but only two finals - this being the second.

Not even those numbers made New Zealand the obvious choice for the final, which is far from the mouth watering prospect of an India-Pakistan or even Australia-Pakistan final. But Ponting believes the regional rivalry could make for a heated contest. "There's always been a great rivalry between Australia and New Zealand, be it cricket, rugby or even netball." Although the netball aspect of that Down Under derby is not as well publicised as the other two, New Zealand have had the edge in the rugby contest for a long time - which is probably why Ponting sees it as being up to Australia's cricketers to fly the flag for the other side of the Trans Tasman equation.

Have you selected your Super Selector team?