It was just unfortunate for Australia to lose the first match of the Chappel-Hadlee series against New Zealand when a last moment risk from Scott Styris saw Australia with the last option of making it to the presentation ceremony first before Vettori had to. And, from then onwards, needless to be said, it has been only Aussies to have been walking away with the honors of the day. If not for the 2nd one dayer, the remaining two one dayers were completely dominated by Australia. And, this time in the fourth ODI, Australia dismissed Kiwis' claim in the 2nd ODI.
In the 2nd one dayer at Auckland, New Zealand were found blaming the Duckworth-Lewis method for their team's loss against Australia which saw their required number of runs being reduced by just 8 runs and the number of balls being reduced by 30. And, this time, it was the Aussies who were found facing the same situation when rain tried to play a spoilsport. The revised target for Australia happened to be 200 runs from 32 overs as against the 238 run target they were supposed to chase from 50 overs had everything gone alright. Meaning the number of runs required was reduced by just 39 and the number of balls by 96.
Had the game went on smoothly, and than Australia would have had to chase at the rate of just above 4.0 an over, which happened to be just below 6.0 an over after the rain interruption. The main thing that proved costly for the Kiwis was their batting which saw the 2nd highest score in their innings happened to be scored by a number 8 batsman in Darryl Tuffey who bought in all his experience. If not for Bollinger, all the Aussie bowlers returned with wickets and a run rate below 6.0 an over. Most of the Kiwi batsmen were batting as though it was a test match that would end in a draw.
And, when it came to the batting of Australian team, similar to their bowling, if not for one batsmen in Brad Haddin, the rest of them showed no signs of fear and mercy in belting the New Zealand bowlers. One Aussie batsman in Ricky Ponting was found having 8 hits to the fence which was 75% of what the entire New Zealand team put together could do. However, when it came to the number of sixes hit, New Zealand managed to take the upperhand when their team had 9 sixes compared to just 3 from the Aussie side. However, once again, the man-of-the-match was not justified. Scorecard suggests that it was Ricky Ponting who should have been awarded the Mom which was unfortunately awarded to White.
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