Three months ago Roger Twose was reposing in the highest position reached by a New Zealand batsman on the international One-Day rankings, at No 2.

Then his return home was marred by a run of low scores, possibly the worst sequence in his international career.

Now he has shown signs that he is coming out of a horror decline and tomorrow's National Bank series final against Pakistan in Dunedin could be the last chance he has to rectify the recent run of poor form.

Twose has been hinting that he wants to retire from international cricket to concentrate on a business career and while no statement of intent has been forthcoming there is a feeling in the Kiwi camp that this could be Twose's grand hurrah.

It has been an interesting time for Twose since qualifying as a New Zealand player after quitting his highly-successful time with Warwickshire in England.

He always stated that he had a preference for One-Day cricket, something that has been reflected in his dominance of the Shell Cup competition where he holds the record as the greatest run scorer in the history of the Cup.

But when first coming into the national team it was for his deeds in Test cricket that he was most noted.

He provided some solidity in the opening position when it was lacking and had the benefit of one of the more outstanding Test opening partnerships for New Zealand of recent times when adding 214 runs with Craig Spearman in the second Test of the 1995/96 summer against Zimbabwe.

The 94 he scored in that innings remained his highest score in Tests in which he totalled 628 runs at 25.12 in his 16-game career.

In the latter part of his international career it has been his One-Day batting that has come to the fore and in 87 matches to date he has scored 2701 runs at 39.14 which ranks him at No 10 on the all-time New Zealand list.

That is representative of what has been a relatively short international career by most standards, but an example of what has been one of the more consistent batsmen to have played the One-Day game for New Zealand.

Suitable reward for his career also came with his achievement of his maiden ODI century in South Africa in the last game of last summer's ODI series. That set the seal from a statistical point of view, but a win tomorrow would provide the perfect finale for what has been a sterling career for Roger Twose's adopted country.

© CricInfo