Victory!

Last night's hard fought victory over England was a long time coming. But we shouldn't get too excited just yet. The New Zealand batting remains woeful. At the halfway point in our innings our score was 67/5. Even on the low scoring Adelaide wicket that was just not good enough. Perhaps the thing that had me most concerned was Ross Taylor's innings. Coming in with wickets falling he clearly wasn't sure whether to attack or defend. 15 off 44 balls and a dismissal to a rash stroke was the result. It was an uncharacteristically scratchy innings and perhaps proof that poor form and lack of confidence is contagious.

Perhaps the one positive we can take from the batting is that with Oram back in the side there appears to be a much better balance to the line-up.

Okay. Those are the negatives out of the way. Now onto the positives. The fielding was electric and demonstrated that the fluffs against Australia in Sydney were blips and not the norm. And the bowlers were brilliant. Especially Dan Vettori, who showed why he is floating so high in the LG ratings at the moment (prior to this series he was ranked at 5 in the world).

The good bowling form of our cricketers should not be underestimated. Cricinfo recently pointed out that the New Zealand test attack is statistically the equal of Australia's and currently the third best in the world. If we apply the same analysis to ODI figures we can see that New Zealand rates even better than that(1.). Perhaps it is time we start giving their good form as much attention as the bad form of our batsmen?

1. The Cricinfo analysis works by adding together the ratings of each teams' four best bowlers. A lower rating is therefore better. In test matches our score is currently 62 (Bond is ranked 6, Franklin 13, Vettori 20 and Martin 23). In ODIs our best rating players are currently Vettori (5), Bond (10), Mills (11) and Oram (19) , giving us an exceptionally good rating of 45. This puts us second only to Australia.