New Zealand needs its bottom five or six batsmen to ice the cake, not bake it, captain Stephen Fleming said last night after the 33-run loss to England that squared the National Bank Series 2-2.

That was a clear reference to another failure by the top order players to establish themselves and to dissect the bowling of Darren Gough, Matthew Hoggard and Andrew Flintoff for the second time in the series.

Again the partnership building was done by England, especially Michael Vaughan and Graham Thorpe in their 89-run, 87 ball stand which placed them in such a strong position when it rained during their innings.

Fleming had no problems with the desire of local officials to see the match cleaned up last night by use of the Duckworth/Lewis system instead of coming back tomorrow to play the game.

"We're in the entertainment business and we have a full house and there is a responsibility to provide entertainment. I would certainly prefer to play a limited overs match in front of 36,000 people than 10,000 tomorrow," he said.

The system had been discussed many times, but Fleming said the bottom line had been that New Zealand had been set a target and they didn't chase it very well.

"We saw the target and saw it was quite healthy so we had to create the strike rate. There was a level of risk that was increased and the result was that it bordered on recklessness at times.

"The intent to create a strike rate was there, we faced some good bowling at the outset and we just played our shots at the wrong time," Fleming said.

The series was set up well for the finale in Dunedin and Fleming said the results had almost mirrored themselves.

"We had our week last week, they had their week this week," he said.

The momentum was now with England.

The New Zealand top order was only sparking on one cylinder instead of four or five and that was what was needed to win.

"The series is something we desperately want and we tend to play our best cricket when we are desperate. Perhaps we are not used to being in the comfort zone when we are 2-0 up."

New Zealand would not be painting over the flaws in their approach and they would be making full use of the two days of practice they have in Dunedin to put everything into winning on Tuesday.

© CricInfo