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If New Zealand's bowlers don't get their act together smartly, the ODI series against India will be whisked beyond their reach long before the finale at Eden Park in nine days.
In the course of their 53-run loss at McLean Park on Tuesday night - and it was worse
than that margin suggests, Duckworth-Lewis recalculations putting a softer focus on what was a shocker - they collectively failed to follow their captain, Dan Vettori's instructions to be tight and to restrict the ability of India's batsmen to free their arms. They paid a hefty price.
Only Ian Butler, a minor revelation over the past couple of weeks in his return to the national side after four years' absence, and Vettori himself followed the script with a tidy effort in mid-innings.
Had they not managed that, India would have sailed past 300 and in only 38 overs. As it was, 273 for four was bulky enough to see off a New Zealand batting effort in which, once the rain calculations came into play, they were left climbing an Everest in jandals.
Five partnerships of 0 did not help, but the game was up well before then anyway.
The aspect which particularly disappointed Vettori was that it was his better-performing players who didn't front up.
The best example was senior new ball bowler Kyle Mills, who has had a fine summer.
He was returning from an Achilles tendon strain, had not played since the last ODI against Australia in Brisbane on February 13, and was clearly short of a gallop.
His seven overs cost 69. Add in two from Jacob Oram - on his tentative return to the bowling crease after a lengthy layoff for a calf strain - which went for 19 and that's two bowlers Vettori could usually rely on costing almost 10 an over from almost a quarter of the entire overs bowled.
Vettori said Mills felt he was fit to play. In hindsight, an extra couple of days' solid work in the nets might have been more prudent.
"I was pretty disappointed with the way we were in the field right from the start," Vettori said. "Little things crept in and didn't allow us get into the game.
"We turn up on wicket like this and know we have to be inch perfect to succeed and didn't even get close. Giving width to [Virendar] Sehwag is almost unforgivable and we did that on a number of occasions."
Sehwag has hit this tour running. Each innings has had moments of the "wow" factor which puts him among the most exhilarating batsmen in the game, and his 56-ball 77 on Tuesday made it clear he's getting his eye in.
He doesn't bother about moving his feet much. Neither do some of his colleagues. But they'll argue, as the ball is being thrown back from the stands, that it doesn't matter that much.
They remind you of the story of a young Ian Botham, having catapulted a ball into the distance during a net session, being scolded by his coach: "Look at your feet lad, look at your feet!"
To which Botham replied: "Look where the ball's gone."
Tuesday night's beating quickly put the double success in the Twenty20 games in perspective, but Vettori wouldn't buy the argument that New Zealand will have lost heart by the nature of the McLean Park pasting.
"We've got to be tougher on ourselves than that. We realise that to compete against India we have to be up near our best.
"[The bowlers] weren't in the right areas as often as I'd like and that's what we did do in the Twenty20 games. If we want to succeed we've got to get these guys fronting up in every single game."
New Zealand have played some good one-day cricket recently, but not consistently. The second game in Wellington tomorrow is the chance for swift redemption. If they don't wrest back some of the initiative, a long few weeks are looming.
