Warner hopes to force McCullum 'brain explosion'

David Warner has great respect for Brendon McCullum, but thinks the secret to countering his influence this Saturday will be to force him to have a "brain explosion". Australia take on New Zealand at Eden Park in Auckland on Saturday and Warner expects a hostile crowd to send a few obscure swear words his way, but he is more interested in what will happen in the middle.

It will be Australia's second match of the World Cup after their wash-out against Bangladesh, and it will be New Zealand's fourth. Their most recent game was a thrashing of England at Westpac Stadium in Wellington, where McCullum smashed 77 off 25 balls. You could say he blew the lid off the Cake Tin, except that cake tins don't really have lids.

There are plenty of dangerous batsmen in the New Zealand line-up but McCullum is the key wicket, given the swiftness with which he can take a game away from the opposition. In that sense he is perhaps New Zealand's David Warner, which might explain why Warner believes he knows the way to get McCullum - build up the pressure and force him into a mistake.

"I think a lot of people have seen in the last 10 years how Brendon McCullum can bat," Warner said in Auckland. "It's not by fluke or by chance he's come out and scored the runs he has. He's had a great last 12 months but at the end of the day he's one player out of the rest of their team.

"I haven't played much against him. But he seems like a great guy. I think a lot of the guys know him off the field. He seems like a great, humble guy. But when we walk on the field it's going to be a different story.

"If he nicks them we've got to catch them. If they bowl the right line and lengths we'll get him out. He's a player who can come down the wicket, use the off side well. We've got to back our strengths. If we bowl well to him, we'll create the pressure and he'll have a brain explosion."

Warner is no stranger to brain explosions himself, both on field and off. When Australia last played New Zealand, in the 2013 Champions Trophy in England, Warner was left out of the XI; it had just emerged that day that Warner had punched Joe Root in a pub a few days earlier. As it happened, the match was washed out.

Strangely, that is the only ODI that Australia and New Zealand have played in the past four years, their last result being an Australian victory in Nagpur in the 2011 World Cup. The Chappell-Hadlee Trophy seems to have largely been forgotten, although it is likely that it will be placed up for grabs in this Saturday's game in Auckland.

The last time a full Chappell-Hadlee series was played was in 2009-10, when Australia won 3-2 in New Zealand. Warner did not play in that series but he was part of the T20s on the same tour, and he knows what to expect from the New Zealand crowd.

"I hope they come out and boo us and give us crap like they always do," Warner said. "That's what's going to happen. We love it, it gets us up and going, gets the adrenaline going for sure.

"I love it. You get some obscure swear words and a couple of things thrown at you, but that's what you expect when you come here. It's happened before. It's probably going to happen again. But I embrace it. They can give it to me as much as they want. I'll just get it on board and let my bat do the talking."