Cricket: Vettori says a further lift is needed

Daniel Vettori believes New Zealand will have to lift their game to live with Australia in the second one-day international tomorrow night.

But the player who initially put the brakes on Australia's flying start on Sunday reckons New Zealand have just as much room for improvement as their opposition, despite taking the opening match of the Chappell-Hadlee Series by four wickets.

"We'll have to play better than we did on Sunday to win again, but the good thing is that there's plenty of room for improvement, and particularly in regard to our bowling in the first 10 overs."

Australia were threatening to score more than 300 in the first match before Vettori was introduced, taking the sting out of the scoring, as well as sending back three of the much-vaunted top-order.

Of more concern will be the efforts of opening bowlers Kyle Mills and Ian Butler, both of whom suffered from the approach of Adam Gilchrist in particular, and gave up respective totals of 32 and 28 off their initial four overs.

New Zealand coach John Bracewell will not name his side until tonight, but it could be that Andre Adams or Chris Harris is brought in at the expense of one of the opening bowlers, depending on the condition of the SCG pitch.

If the wicket is slow, as it traditionally is, Bracewell might be tempted to play Harris, while Adams could be considered as a straight swap for either Mills or Butler.

Vettori said it had been encouraging to see New Zealand rediscover their strength in the middle of the innings when he, Chris Cairns and Scott Styris reined in the scoring rate and poured the pressure back on Australia.

His three for 31 represented not only a turning point in the opposition innings but also his best performance against Australia, something he said came from a no-frills approach rather than anything overly complicated.

"I've been keeping it pretty simple, really. When you come to Australia you know there's going to be good pitches and quality players, and that if you try too hard you're going to get damaged.

"But things have been going well for me with the ball.

"Australia's probably the hardest tour in the world for a finger spinner because their batsmen come at you so hard - and because of that I had to be quite meticulous in my planning."

Meanwhile, Michael Kasprowicz, who went from test hero to ODI zero in the space of a week, was in a philosophical mindset yesterday as he reflected on the nightmare 48th over, when he conceded 22 runs.

"Put it this way, I'm not the first bloke to get an over smashed in the one-day game and I won't be the last bloke either," he said yesterday.

"It's just the nature of the game. We would have liked things to go a bit differently and I tried to get some balls in the right areas, but there were some good shots in among it all too. "That's one-day cricket."