Nicknames usually take a while to stick, but all of Wellington is agreed. The Westpac Trust Stadium is a bit of a mouthful - not to mention an eyesore - so the locals call it the Cake Tin instead. As a building, the Cake Tin takes the biscuit: it's round, metallic and unlovely, and the smallest noise sends a tinny echo rebounding all round the ground. It was a good job it was about two-thirds full, otherwise the atmosphere would have been as morbid as the architecture. As it was, things got quite lively. The Barmy Army, fresh from stealing the headlines after winning the verbal jousts at Christchurch, were out in full force again, littering the stadium with Union Jacks and unleashing their earthy melodies at every opportunity. The Mad Caps - a 50-strong group of Wellingtonians recruited by New Zealand Cricket to try to drown out the Barmies - were completely anonymous. You couldn't hear them, and you could barely see them either: wearing yellow T-shirts against a background of light-orange seats wasn't the cleverest piece of marketing.

More visible were the Beige Brigade, a bunch of twentysomething blokes who wear New Zealand's chocolate and brown one-day tops from the 1980s and gave as good as they got. There was a streaker too, who dodged a couple of rugby tackles, required four security guards to drag him from the field, and received a rousing ovation. The loudest noise, though, came during the interval, when Peter Jackson, the director of Lord of the Rings, orchestrated a series of ear-splitting grunts from a crowd of 25,000 for use in the sequel, The Two Towers. Orcs have rarely sounded so bemused.

But there was genuine enthusiasm for the cricket too. The crowd applauded Lou Vincent's breathless running between the wickets; they beeped their horns when Craig McMillan, facing down the wicket, reverse-swept Ashley Giles for three; and they erupted when Marcus Trescothick was unluckily given out caught behind in the second over of England's reply. As the English collapse kicked in even earlier than usual and the crowd jived to the music, you almost forgot you were sitting in a joyless metal ring.

The unlikely hero for New Zealand was Andre Adams, who took a career-best 2 for 25 on Wednesday, and now bettered that in his first four overs. He's short for a seamer - about 5ft 10 - and he's not all that fast either, but he moved the ball both ways on a sluggish pitch and knocked the stuffing out of England's top order. Two of his three wickets were dubious - Trescothick didn't edge it, while Graham Thorpe, given out leg-before, emphatically did - but at the moment he epitomises the difference between the sides. Where England aren't getting anything out of their fringe players, New Zealand are squeezing every last drop of juice.

"Pommies are like teletubbies," mocked one banner. "Nobody watches them any more." If they keep playing like this, that fiction is in danger of becoming fact.

Lawrence Booth is assistant editor of Wisden.com. His reports from New Zealand will appear throughout the series.

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