Cricket: Home soil 5-nil sweep looms large in Fleming's mind

Stephen Fleming is anxious to avoid an unwanted piece of history today when New Zealand square off against Australia in the final one-day international, at McLean Park.

Despite some memorable drubbings in the past, New Zealand have yet to suffer a 5-nil clean-sweep on home soil, a record that will survive only if Fleming's men perform a startling transformation and beat the world champions today.

New Zealand have trailed 4-nil only twice before and managed to claw back some respectability on both occasions, defying Steve Waugh's Australian side at Eden Park in 1999-2000, and repeating the effort a year later against Sri Lanka.

Providing another incentive today is the fact that New Zealand will lose their chance to secure their No 2 ranking if they don't win, meaning they will slip to third position at the cut-off date for the World Cup seedings.

Fleming said that contrary to popular opinion, his team had everything to play for in the final game of the series, despite the momentum so far and the series result.

"We're pretty determined about the last game," he said. "It's a series that means a lot to the New Zealand public and to us in particular.

"We haven't played well enough to compete and we've got one last chance to beat Australia in the series, and I'm sure there's a lot of people who would like to see us take one game from them."

Fleming has watched his side crack under the pressure of the Australian onslaught, something he puts down to form, inexperience and the outstanding calibre of the opposition.

But he said the team had managed to stay positive in the face of an extreme challenge, and were intent on transferring the accuracy and intensity that they showed on the practice track, into the match arena.

"We haven't put in a complete performance yet and we'd like to here," he said.

"I'm sure Australia will want to beat us 5-nil and there's also a lot of motivation to stop them doing that."

As for the rankings and World Cup seedings, Fleming said his team would have to face up to the consequences of their performance over the past month, and either turn things around with a win today, or accept a demotion to No 3.

New Zealand had proved the world's most successful ODI side last year, and had made much of their unprecedented rise to No 2 in the ladder, almost within striking range of the hot-running Australians.

"We were pretty quick to hold up that No 2 sign so it wouldn't sit well with me to discard all interest if we slide to No 3," said Fleming.

"We've got to take the good with the bad and we haven't played well enough to be the No 2 up to now.

"But it would be good to win and hold on to that No 2 ranking."

His own form had probably been his biggest bugbear, in that he found the captaincy role much less complicated if he was leading from the front, scoring plenty of runs and feeling confident about his main job - his batting.

"My batting's the key thing," he said.

"It's been great for the past couple of years and I'd really like to finish the series off on a good note here."

He said that to take any game off Australia would be a big feat on current form, and needed senior men such as himself, Chris Cairns and Craig McMillan to perform at once.

New Zealand opted to omit Lance Hamilton from their 12 last night after welcoming back Daniel Vettori and including Tama Canning, a move that created another chance for Jeff Wilson.

Australia will have Ricky Ponting back and are expected to leave out one of their four quick bowlers (possibly Brett Lee), the injured Matthew Hayden and one of either all-rounder James Hopes or spinner Brad Hogg.

TEAMS

New Zealand: Stephen Fleming (c), Craig Cumming, Hamish Marshall, Craig McMillan, James Marshall, Chris Cairns, Tama Canning, Brendon McCullum, Daniel Vettori, Jeff Wilson, Kyle Mills. Lance Hamilton (twelfth man).

Australia: Ricky Ponting (c), Adam Gilchrist, Simon Katich, Damien Martyn, Andrew Symonds, Michael Clarke, Brad Hogg, James Hopes, Brett Lee, Jason Gillespie, Michael Kasprowicz, Glenn McGrath.