Cricket: One-day side desperate to stop losing run

Daniel Vettori. Photo / Getty Images

"All we want to do is try and win games for New Zealand."

New Zealand cricket captain Daniel Vettori's vision should not be overly difficult to attain, but winning one game, let alone a few, looks a long way off as the beleaguered tourists head to Bangalore for today's fourth one-day international against a rampant Indian team.

Down 0-3 and in the midst of a nine-match losing streak from completed matches, which puts them just four shy of the 1994-95 team's horror run of 13 successive defeats, the situation is looking bleak for Vettori's men.

They have been as outplayed as they could have been by an Indian team resting a handful of stars, including captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Harbhajan Singh.

A 40-run loss at Guwahati was followed by lop-sided eight and nine-wicket defeats at Jaipur and Vadodara, respectively, which were highlighted by unbeaten tons to stand-in skipper Gautam Gambhir.

Confidence is, understandably, low in the New Zealand camp but Vettori is urging positivity as they try to salvage something from this five-match series.

"It's so important that we get at least one win under our belt," Vettori said. "Everyone in our team is hurting immensely and we're disappointed in the way we're playing.

"All we want to do is try and win games for New Zealand but it's not happening at the moment.

"Most teams rely on confidence and ours is not great at the moment because of what's happened in these last few games."

Vettori has been unable to rely on his top-order batsmen, who have not applied themselves early against the swinging ball, while the pace bowlers have dished up plenty of juicy fare for opener Gambhir and No 3 Virat Kohli, who have almost completed the job of chasing 200-plus scores on their own during the past two matches.

"When you come to the sub-continent, your top order will win you games most of the time," Vettori said.

"I think there is a number of issues, but I think one-day cricket is normally won with the bat and if we look through most of our innings we probably have not put together scores that can compete in this part of the world.

"But in saying that, we have been disappointing with the ball in the last two games as well. The only thing that has been good and stayed constant has been our fielding."

While the longest New Zealand losing streak of completed one-day internationals is 13, registered from April 1994 to January 1995, the current trot of nine equals the second-worst, from March 1985 to January 1986.

New Zealand's current run of 11 matches without a win (including abandoned/no result matches) is second to the 15 in the 1994-95 period, which has been "bettered" only by Kenya, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, who went 47 matches without victory between 1999-2003.

- NZPA