Cricket: Black Caps face up to trio of leggies <BR>

New Zealand are pulling out all stops to combat the threat of test record wicket-taker Shane Warne in the second test, starting on Friday.

Battling to recover their reputations after the Brisbane debacle on Sunday, the New Zealanders trained long and hard in the Adelaide heat yesterday afternoon, finishing with a batting session against a trio of invited leg-spinners.

Warne, who with 459 test wickets leads Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan (432) as the most successful bowler in the game, is expected to be one of New Zealand's biggest hurdles on the Adelaide Oval pitch, a surface that tends to offer turn later in the piece.

The larger-than-life Aussie leggie, who follows in the footsteps of former greats such as Charlie Grimmett, Bill "Tiger" O'Reilly and Richie Benaud, might not have initiated the fourth-day blitz at the Gabba, but he certainly finished it off, taking four for 15 to extend his wicket-taking lead over Murali to 27.

New Zealand apparently requested the leg-spinners for yesterday's session, indicating they feel the battle between Warne and their batsmen will be one of the most crucial at Adelaide, where the temperature yesterday reached 33C and is expected to rise for the rest of the week.

Respected as a handful for the best batsmen in the game, Warne has the ability to mesmerise lower-order hopefuls and works hard to exploit the openings created by his pace bowlers, as he demonstrated in Brisbane.

On that occasion he entered the fray after Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie had made the initial inroads and proceeded to king-hit the lower order and tail with a persistently direct approach, sending back Scott Styris, Jacob Oram, Daniel Vettori and Chris Martin.

Whether yesterday's session against the leg-spinners was any help remained unclear, however, as most of the batsmen laboured against the turning ball, and South Australian teenager Cullen Bailey looked good enough to play on Friday.

These are not happy times for the New Zealanders and it showed on occasions yesterday, particularly when Mark Richardson nicked a ball from Chris Martin and erupted in fury, chastising himself and hurling his bat into the roof of the net.

There was also another incident involving Craig McMillan, who had a verbal confrontation with an accredited photographer while bowling, asking the journalist whether he had "some sort of fascination with me".

In contrast, Australia's practice session went swimmingly well, and featured a fired-up Brett Lee operating at full pace. He later expressed confidence in his fitness and his ability to bowl fast for prolonged periods.

Lee, who hasn't been able to force his way back in to the playing X1 after a break through injury, said he was feeling much better and was improving with every outing.

"I haven't been clocked for a while because I haven't played an international game," he said yesterday. "But generally you can tell in the nets, and I've definitely been bowling at 150km/h.

"I thought the ball came out really quick at the weekend and really quick this morning, so I'm definitely ready."

The NSW paceman played a one-dayer for his state last weekend and was delighted with how the ball was coming out. "I felt really good. The pace felt fantastic and it felt pretty easy to get through 10 overs."