FEBRUARY 10 — The start of the Cricket World Cup in Australia and New Zealand is only days away, and England expects... not great deal, to be perfectly honest.

According to the bookies, the only teams likely to win the competition, which gets underway on Saturday, are Australia and South Africa, with an outside chance for co-hosts New Zealand, and judging by the quality of the squads that seems to be a fair assessment.

Led by inspirational captain Michael Clarke, the one-day king Aussies boast plenty of firepower with both ball and bat, and they must have a more than “fair dinkum” chance of lifting the trophy for a fifth time after the final in Melbourne on 29 March.

Although Clarke’s participation is in doubt due to a long-standing hamstring injury, the Australian squad is fearsome. George Bailey, Aaron Finch, Glenn Maxwell and Shane Watson are ranked in the current world top 20 batsmen, and the bowling trio of Mitchell Johnson, Mitchell Starc and James Faulkner is good enough to destroy any opposition.

With the explosiveness of David Warner, the all-round skills of Steve Smith and the experience of wicketkeeper Brad Haddin, Australia can even afford the luxury of one or two players having an off-day, and the strength of their challenge was shown by crushing 100-runs-plus victories over England and India in their most recent warm-up matches.

If anyone can match the Aussies, it is a South Africa team which possesses the world’s top two-ranked batsmen in the form of AB De Villiers and Hashim Amla.

De Villiers, who also captains the team, made headlines in a meeting with the West Indies a couple of weeks ago by scoring the fastest century in the history of the sport, unbelievably crashing 149 runs off just 44 balls in an innings containing no less than 16 sixes.

To put the rapidity of De Villiers’ scoring into context, the far more restrained and classically correct Amla also scored a century in the same match and even exceeded his teammate’s total by four runs... but he faced more than three times as many deliveries to do so.

If he can maintain his recent form, De Villiers will become the star batsman of the tournament, and his team's cause is greatly helped by the presence of an excellent bowling attack led by the frighteningly fast and relentlessly hostile Dale Steyn.

South Africa have always struggled to do well in the Cricket World Cup, never even reaching the final. But that has to be their minimum expectation on this occasion, and it would take an unexpected collapse to prevent it from happening.

England, contrarily, are in a state of flux at the moment and passing through one of those “transitional periods” which sometimes seem to go on forever.

Captain and one-day specialist Eoin Morgan has only been in his leadership position for six weeks following the dismissal of previous captain Alastair Cook, who has not even been named in a squad which is also missing previous stalwarts such as Graeme Swann, Kevin Pietersen and Matt Prior.

England do possess some talented players, with Ian Bell remaining one of the classiest batsmen on the scene and fellow veteran Jimmy Anderson still an outstanding bowler. But expecting a team to gel so quickly under a newly appointed and inexperienced captain in a long and gruelling competition so far away from home is probably asking far too much.

The Asian challenge will be led by the familiar triumvirate of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, all of whom possess some greatly experienced players and boast some strong virtues – but probably not enough to turn them into competition winners.

My favourite player to watch, whether with bat or ball, is among those still going strong for Pakistan: “Boom Boom” Shahid Afridi, a 34 year-old veteran of nearly 400 one-day internationals who can deliver unpredictably mesmerising spells of spin bowling and then smash the ball from Sydney to Melbourne with the bat.

Afridi is a wonderful entertainer and Pakistan can do a lot of damage if he hits top form. But he is also, like many of his teammates, famously inconsistent and his team are just as likely to suffer an embarrassing early exit as they are to progress to the final.

The format of the tournament is long and arduous with every team playing six group stage games over the course of a month before the serious business of the quarter-finals gets underway.

Realistically, there should not be any shocks among the eight teams to qualify for the knockout stage, and the protracted length of the group phase will allow the strongest teams to find their rhythm, only making them more dangerous as the tournament goes on — there will be no excuse for “rustiness” from any team which fails to do itself justice.

In a 100-over slog, anything can happen: One inspired spell of bowling or one lucky innings of outrageous slogs is enough to change a game. So anyone can win.

But history shows that the best, rather than the luckiest, usually lift the trophy: and the best, especially with home advantage, appear to be Australia.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.