The best way to do that is, of course, for the Blackcaps to keep winning and it is important they do not see this tournament as an end in itself but, instead, the start of something even better.
It all came down to five overs that cost New Zealand the chance of glory in the ICC Cricket World Cup final. Yes, the start was terrible, and when you are 39 for three against a side as good as Australia, then you are always up against it.
Brendon McCullum’s men can win, but as to whether they will, that is absolutely in the balance with the odds favouring Australia – but only just.
As a captain who suffered two of those heartaches, in 1999 and 2007, to see a New Zealand side playing with the freedom and quality that Brendon McCullum and his players are producing certainly warms the heart.
New Zealand and South Africa is almost too close to call. Both teams are playing with confidence and one look at the talent on show on either side means it has the potential to be a classic.
It is easy to throw around superlatives to describe and categorise Martin Guptill’s monumental 237 not out against the West Indies in the ICC Cricket World Cup quarter-final in Wellington.
In the West Indies’ favour is a train of thought that in big matches it is individuals who win the day, and there is more than a grain of truth in that theory.
The end might not have been pretty. Apart from the winning six by Kane Williamson, which produced a wave of relief around Eden Park, but New Zealand will take the win, take the positives, and take the lessons too.
Aside from saving the electricity bill by finishing a match that was scheduled as a day-night encounter long before the sun went down, there was so much to like about the way New Zealand went about their work.
