KEY POINTS:
Blossoming off-spinner Jeetan Patel has strategy on his mind approaching Sunday's tri-series one-day international against Australia.
One of the few players to escape from the double-header in Hobart with his reputation intact, Patel is a reasonable chance to play his third consecutive match of the series on Sunday,
particularly with doubt still hovering over the status of Shane Bond.
The 26-year-old Wellington slow bowler suffered the most expensive outing of his career in the first match against Australia, but starred in the contest against England - taking the key wickets of Paul Collingwood and Ian Bell, and running out Ed Joyce with a direct hit.
Patel yesterday attributed his improvement to a better strategic approach against England, and was sure he'd cope better against Australia if he was to receive another chance against the world champions at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
"I learned that I can't go out and attack like I thought I could," he said. "Maybe I went a bit hard at them. I've got to understand the game situation and be smarter - that's basically my game.
"I think I just varied my pace more against England. I knew what the pitch was going to be like and that I hadn't varied my pace much against Australia; I didn't think ahead of the game.
"But on Tuesday I was ahead of the game and that helped me a lot."
Patel, who has now taken 21 wickets in 14 ODIs at an average of 27.33 and a economy rate of 4.92, said the New Zealand side were not beating themselves up over the poor start to the tri-series.
He even got fired up momentarily when asked by a local Channel 10 reporter if, following the loss against season-long easy-beats England, the squad were worried about becoming the new laughing stocks of Australia.
"No, definitely not," he snapped. "I don't think we are at all. We're an international cricket team and we will compete with, and beat Australia, so that's my comment on that.
"We're here to win every game and I think we've got a good chance of going out there and beating Australia.
"We know what we have to do and we just have to keep believing in ourselves and our skills, and the people around us."
Despite New Zealand's lean pickings this season, including being bowled out for 73 at Auckland and slumping to consecutive 189 and 105-run defeats against Sri Lanka and Australia, he insisted that morale in the camp was reasonably buoyant.
"I think we're excited to be in Sydney with five more games remaining in the series, and we're looking forward to every single one of them," he said.
"We've got a good chance to get back into the competition by winning on Sunday and taking it from there. So, I don't think we're in a bad state."
Patel laughed when asked whether the New Zealand bowlers were starting to lose patience with their batsmen and demand better results, saying the team wouldn't splinter along those lines.
But he did acknowledge that life was likely to become infinitely more straightforward for the bowling attack when the top-order climbed out of their slump.
"We're the sort of team that needs to do everything well. We might not have the Pontings, the McGraths or the Lees, but we have a team that will go out there and fight. We showed that in the last game; we just didn't set ourselves up with the bat."
