Captain Ricky Ponting and coach John Buchanan have thrown out the challenge to Australia's fringe cricketers to prove they are worthy of a place in the world champion's line-up for the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies.

A 13-man Australian team flew out to New Zealand on Wednesday to contest the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy and among the hopefuls pressing their claims in the three-match one-day series are debutants Brad Hodge and Mick Lewis and second-string pacemen Stuart Clark and Nathan Bracken.

While the focus is on bringing home the trophy, Ponting and Buchanan admitted close attention would be paid to the new faces in the team as the countdown to the next World Cup begins.

"I think the reality is we've got something like 30, 35 games to go before the World Cup so it's a pretty important period from now," Buchanan said.

"In terms of looking at the current crop of players we've got and those who might be the back-up players... this particular tour offers that opportunity.

"We've now got a few newer faces so it will give us an insight into their abilities to play at this level. So it's all very important in terms of lead-up to final preparations for the World Cup, which probably begins in earnest when we play the Champions Trophy later in 2006."

Ponting labelled the tour a chance for the lesser-experienced players in the squad to "keep themselves at the top of that list" for World Cup selection.

"I think the games we've seen Bracken, Clarke, even Brad Williams a couple of years ago play, I think we identified quite quickly that they had what it takes to succeed at the highest level," Ponting said.

"So it's an exciting time to see three pretty fresh faces in the bowling stocks and we'll get a really good idea just how good they really are.

"There's a few different, unfamiliar faces that we're looking forward to being exposed and play cricket at the highest level. Hopefully in this tournament we'll get to see a fair bit of those guys in action."

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