AUCKLAND (AP):

Australia and New Zealand players are trying to tone down the rhetoric around their impending clash at the Cricket World Cup, stressing that the hype around tomorrow's game is attaching too much importance to a pool match.

The showdown between the co-hosts and co-favourites has been billed as the biggest one-day international in New Zealand in two decades.

Australia's opening batsman David Warner stoked the fire when he said New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum was prone to "brain explosions" and challenged the Auckland crowd to do its worst.

Warner has seemed to relish the public enemy role, and is the current totem for Australia's reputation for using verbal intimidation - 'sledging' - to combat opposing players.

However, New Zealand veteran Dan Vettori, playing at his fifth World Cup, said that reputation is "a little bit overstated".

"In 18 years, I can't remember being sledged by an Australian team," Vettori said Thursday.

"The way it's portrayed is not quite right. It's more about the physical contest; that's what the guys get excited about."

While Warner sought to distract McCullum with his pre-match comments, Australian paceman Josh Hazlewood was more respectful, saying the New Zealand skipper was the key to the game.

Hazlewood said Australia's bowlers, some of whom had played against McCullum in the Indian Premier League, would devise strategies to counter his power-hitting. McCullum is particularly threatening at Eden Park, which has abnormally short straight boundaries, and Australia must find a way to counter that.

New Zealand coach Mike Hesson said his players were not about to take Warner's bait and become distracted by a verbal battle.

"Some teams go down that path more than others, but in recent times, we haven't gone down that path," Hesson said."

"We deal with plenty of sides that provide that (sledging), and we tend to go about our work. We don't get too caught up in that sort of stuff."

While tomorrow's match will carry huge interest as a clash between two of the World Cup's strongest sides, it is only a pool game, and both have ambitions that go well beyond that.