In 1931 the biggest earthquake in New Zealand's history churned up the sleepy seaside town of Napier and raised a 300sq-km chunk of land from the sea. Seventy years on and it feels as if England have got to make up even more ground than that. According to The Dominion newspaper, they are "generally regarded as either a sad joke or a bunch of players who performed above expectations in India and now think they are on a jolly good rewarding holiday". Tomorrow the joke simply has to be on New Zealand, otherwise a series that began less than a week ago will have ended in anticlimax.

Five years ago here, it was the other way round. England led the one-day series 2-0 with three to play, only to tie the third game and lose the last two. But it will take another tectonic shift for history to repeat itself in reverse.

While New Zealand have named the same XII that won at Christchurch and Wellington, England are trying to convince themselves that they know what their best line-up is. Today some of them spent the morning dodging sharks in Hawke Bay on a boat called the Adrenalin. They could do with some of that now.

Much of the debate centres on who will keep wicket. Marcus Trescothick revealed on Monday that he hadn't even brought a pair of gloves with him for the one-day tour to India, which shows how much England were banking on James Foster to carry on the progress he made in the Tests there. But at yesterday's fielding practice, after everyone else had finished for the afternoon, Trescothick was still out there in his big red gloves, diving all over the place as if his career depended on it. The man peppering him with throwdowns was … Foster. If that demonstrates good team spirit, it might also be a clue as to which way England are leaning.

The difficulty is that England don't yet know whether Foster is a worthy long-term replacement for Alec Stewart. But the only way to find out is to keep picking him – seven missed chances in the last five games is the sort of price they might have to pay.

Andy Caddick v Matthew Hoggard is equally tricky to resolve. Caddick claims he needs to find his rhythm, but England are running out of time, and they might be swayed by Hoggard's 2 for 36 at Wellington, one of the few tidy aspects in a messy display. And there's also a case for replacing Ashley Giles – who at one stage yesterday was limping during a kickabout – with Jeremy Snape, who is an electric presence at backward point and a streetfighter with the bat. It also takes a while for batsmen to get used to Snape's unique brand of slow loopers. Surely Craig McMillan wouldn't be able to sweep them as easily as he swept Giles on Saturday.

As for the middle order, Owais Shah may have scratched around for 7 in 39 balls, but the circumstances were dire and he deserves another chance. And Ben Hollioake, back to full fitness after a bout of tendonitis on his left knee, hinted that he was in line for a recall: "I suspect that I might be, and I'll be very disappointed if I'm not." On what is usually a good wicket for batting, Michael Vaughan could return too, which would mean no place for Craig White, who looks anodyne once the batsmen have cottoned on to his slower ball, or Paul Collingwood, whose favoured leg-side biffs have been cleverly worked on by Stephen Fleming.

Worryingly, we were discussing most of these issues before the Wellington Walkover, and it's hard to escape the conclusion that since coming from behind in India, England have fallen away again – both in terms of performance and planning. At Wellington, Nasser Hussain and Duncan Fletcher both admitted England were flat. If they play like zombies again tomorrow, we'll really know something is wrong.

Possible teams
New Zealand 1 Nathan Astle, 2 Chris Nevin (wk), 3 Stephen Fleming (capt), 4 Craig McMillan, 5 Lou Vincent, 6 Chris Cairns, 7 Chris Harris, 8 Andre Adams, 9 Daniel Vettori, 10 Daryl Tuffey, 11 Ian Butler.

England 1 Marcus Trescothick (wk), 2 Nick Knight, 3 Nasser Hussain (capt), 4 Graham Thorpe, 5 Michael Vaughan, 6 Owais Shah, 7 Andrew Flintoff, 8 Ben Hollioake, 9 Jeremy Snape, 10 Darren Gough, 11 Matthew Hoggard.

Lawrence Booth is assistant editor of Wisden.com. You can read his reports here throughout the tour.

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