KEY POINTS:
Martin Crowe used to treat this ground as his personal playground.
He loved the true bounce, the short square boundaries and the beautiful surrounds.
Crowe got to play only one test here, in 1987, inevitably scoring a century. Team-mates, however, still talk reverentially about the 242 not out
he scored here against South Australia in 1985, when he made batting look like the most simplest craft in the world.
So it is fair to say the ground held few concerns for him.
Crowe is in Adelaide for the test and, in a mid-pitch chat with Mark Nicholas before the start of play, he expressed a few concerns about the current crop of New Zealanders trying to carve out scores in the world's best batting conditions.
His worry was not so much at the lack of talent but the "emotional scars" they will carry from having to learn on the job.
He related it to the fact he was facing the feared Lillee and Thomson in a test when he was just 19. He was out of his depth and it took him two years to recover.
It is a salient point. There are players in this line-up who have not done enough at first-class level to warrant test status. Now they are here, you have to wonder if the repeated failures will wear them down mentally.
Brendon McCullum, back at No 7, said the only thing they could do was persevere.
"If we can continue with guys for a period of time, get 20-30 tests into our top order, it gives us the best opportunity," he said.
"You've got to think Ricky Ponting, Sachin Tendulkar, Michael Hussey - those guys all started somewhere."
McCullum himself was the catalyst for yesterday's latest collapse. In 8.3 overs of abject batting, New Zealand lost their remaining four wickets while adding just eight runs to its overnight score of 262-6.
McCullum (30), who had battled mightily on Friday evening, went searching for a Brett Lee leg-cutter and feathered it through to the keeper. When you have a team that is now infamous for being seven-out, all-out, it was an ominous start.
Tim Southee pushed two, then couldn't get out of the way of a Mitchell Johnson bumper and Iain O'Brien (0) and Chris Martin (0) did what was expected of them. Daniel Vettori stayed solid on 18 not out.
If the end was predictable, the damage was done yesterday when all the batsmen got starts but frittered away their wickets with poor shots. Jesse Ryder (13) and Peter Fulton (29) slapped long hops to fielders and Aaron Redmond, who made a stroke-laden 83, slogged out to cow corner.
For the third time in three innings, an extravagant drive accounted for Jamie How (16) and Daniel Flynn (11) was caught on his crease. Only Ross Taylor (44) can claim to be the victim of bad luck as Stuart Clark's delivery would have cleared the stumps by some margin.
