A venture into the unknown awaits both sides when New Zealand and England meet in the fourth match of the National Bank One-Day International Series at a sellout Eden Park, Auckland tomorrow.

Not since New Zealand's outstanding home run of wins in the 1992 World Cup has a full house crowd of 35,000 turned out. That's what is will happen tomorrow with all the tickets for the game sold. That in spite of the rain forecast.

The run of success in 1992 was based on New Zealand's mastery of its "dibbly-dobbly" attack of Chris Harris, Gavin Larsen, Rod Latham and Dipak Patel on a dry, slow, low Eden Park pitch.

Those pitches are a thing of the past and Eden Park has gone upmarket and is utilising portable pitch technology.

The only problem is that so new is the concept that there is no track record for the pitches and a look at the pitch for tomorrow's game offers little. It does appear to have good grass growth and it has been well compacted but just what it will do, who knows?

New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming said reports suggested the pitch would be low and slow and if that was the thinking after a pitch inspection then New Zealand would probably look to a similar team selection as that which won last Saturday in Wellington. That would see Brendon McCullum return at No 3 and Ian Butler miss the game.

Fleming did admit however, there would be a little bit of guesswork involved in assessing the pitch.

What he will be looking for from the game, whichever way the pitch plays, is better performances from the side in the 50/50 phases of the game.

"We were five overs short of being in a very dominant position [in Napier].

"We reached an even stevens stage and didn't push on. That's mental more than anything. We've just got to keep pushing on. That's the partnership thing."

New Zealand had goals when going out to bat, and there were goals batsmen worked on during their partnerships and based on the state of the game. Improving the decision-making on shot selection at the right stages of innings would be important.

"The bottom line is that it comes down to the individuals executing well enough and turning the strike over. You have to gauge yourself if you can. We all accept there is an element of risk in any one-day innings, but it is just getting that balance right and the amount of risk you have to take depending on the situation in the innings.

"We're falling just short doing the ground work to create a base so we can launch later on," he said.

England captain Nasser Hussain said in Napier that he expected New Zealand to lift their game by 20% after their loss and Fleming said 20% more in Napier the other night would have won the game.

"We were disappointed that we let opportunities slip by, we probably didn't create as much as we could have. We were there for periods of time but not for as long as in the other two games. We just fell a little bit short of where we needed to be," Fleming said.

There was nothing new in the strategies required for victory. New Zealand, despite their success in Australia were still not performing consistently and while the win ratio for the summer is up, it is still nowhere near what the side would like.

Recognising the demands of respective situations is the element that good one-day sides turn to their advantage.

"Each game has its own identity. Its grabbing the intensity on the day and then just dominating the match. Nothing's really changed at all," Fleming said.

© CricInfo