Enough with the ghosts, New Zealand

Why does the World Cup have two hosts? Surely Australia could manage it alone. It's big enough. In fact, it's unnecessarily big. If you utilised the vast empty bit in the middle, you could host five World Cups simultaneously. It might be a bit hostile to play cricket in an arid wasteland under the merciless sun but then that didn't stop Qatar getting a World Cup.

The reason is that the ICC, like any long-suffering parent of siblings, just wanted a quiet life: "If you are doing something exciting, Australia, you know that New Zealand will want to do it too, and I really can't cope with the tantrums."

An alternative solution was to let New Zealand host it themselves, but there could be a problem cramming all those international teams into one tiny country (although that didn't stop Qatar getting a World Cup.)

Anyway, being co-host is still pretty cool. It entitles you to certain privileges. You can help choose the logo, of course, and your prime minister gets to meet Eoin Morgan and shake hands with Dwayne Smith.

It also gives you local advantage over your wide-eyed visitors, although a good host shouldn't exploit this. When a party of England cricketers asks for directions to the golf course, a good host doesn't send them to an army shooting range. A good host doesn't switch the street signs round in Wellington so that Bangladesh don't get to the stadium on time, and a good host makes sure they wash the fruit before adding it to the breakfast buffet.

Sadly, I have to report that New Zealand are abusing their position as deputy hosts. It seems that an unemployed Christchurch ghost has been recruited to Mike Hesson's World Cup backroom staff, and has been warming up for the World Cup by frightening the pyjamas off Pakistan allrounder Haris Sohail.

A few days ago, Mr Sohail was awoken by his bed rattling, and after running through a quick checklist of the most plausible possibilities (earthquake, twitchy-leg syndrome, the fever from which he was suffering) he correctly surmised that he had been the victim of a phantasmal intervention, of the same kind that caused terrifying plumbing irregularities in Stuart Broad's hotel last year, and brought about an utterly inexplicable slight draft in Shane Watson's room at Lumley Castle in 2005.

Naturally, after this spooky encounter, Haris was a nervous wreck and although he went on to score 23 in the first one-day international, it was a pallid, terrified kind of 23, the sort of 23 that told of a man who had been shaken awake by a spectral presence in the early hours. This, quite frankly, is not on. What next? Poltergeists fielding at midwicket? Vampires opening the bowling?

If this dabbling in the supernatural continues, New Zealand, we might have to give serious consideration to no longer choosing you as our second team.

Don't tell the other lot but we've always preferred you. Your country isn't as spider-infested, for a start, and you don't swear as much, or at least, with that accent, it's hard to tell when you're swearing. But if you are prepared to go to these lengths to win, then quite frankly - and it appalls me to have to say this - you're no better than the Australians. I'm not angry, New Zealand, I'm just disappointed.