KEY POINTS:
Never mind the batting and bowling, all attention is on New Zealand's ability to catch a small, round, white object as they approach tomorrow's tri-series one-dayer against Australia.
Steadily improving at the business end of the competition, New Zealand blew potentially match-winning chances in the field against Australia at both Sydney and Perth, allowing the world champions to repair their innings on each occasion.
At Sydney, James Franklin dropped a straight-forward top-edged skier off Michael Clarke at a crucial stage of the run-chase and, at Perth, an out-of-form Matthew Hayden was afforded three lives while scrambling to an unconvincing century.
While Franklin has now made a couple of howlers, the bug has also spread to Daniel Vettori, Ross Taylor and Peter Fulton, and shapes as a crucial area of the game tomorrow as New Zealand attempt to wrest the Australian monkey off their back.
"James Franklin and myself have shelled a couple and it's most unlike us, we've had pretty good catching records," vice-captain Vettori said yesterday.
"In Perth every team was dropping catches, even Australia. In some ways you've got to put it down to the nature of the ground and how that impacts on the ability to see, especially at night.
"There's two ways of going about it, you either forget about it and work hard - I know I'm going one way and James is going the other."
Ironically, the plague of poor catching has infested the team during the first term of their new fielding coach, ex-softballer Travis Wilson, something Vettori said was not sitting well with the new member of the coaching staff.
"He's pulling his hair out. He's just trying to work with us, talk through a lot of the situations and get used to each new ground and the viewing areas.
"He's doing a lot of work on that and I think our fielding has been good - it's just our catching that's let us down."
Beaten by Australia in 19 of their past 21 encounters, the New Zealanders will at least take some heart from their most recent effort, when Jacob Oram's maiden ODI century led them within eight runs of overhauling their hosts' total of 343.
That performance led directly to a second 300-plus total against England, and the sight of a far more confident New Zealand side arriving in Melbourne for the first of their last two preliminary matches of the series.
However, Vettori said yesterday that all the close calls and near misses would amount to nothing if New Zealand couldn't go a step further and beat Australia, preferably starting tomorrow at the McG.
"I feel like it's important to beat them now," he said. "We've had a couple of close games when things have let us down a little bit.
"The biggest thing is trying to get that win to cross the next line because, if we get to the finals, it's no good having four from four in the loss column.
"If we win here then we actually get some confidence going into the finals series, the Chappell-Hadlee and hopefully at the World Cup."
The biggest question surrounding New Zealand's line-up involves fast bowler Shane Bond and whether the tour selectors - coach John Bracewell, captain Stephen Fleming and Vettori - will risk him here or keep him in cotton wool for Tuesday's game against England at Brisbane.
NZ V Australia
Melbourne, 4.30pm tomorrow
New Zealand: Stephen Fleming (c), Lou Vincent, Ross Taylor, Peter Fulton, Scott Styris, Craig McMillan, Jacob Oram, Brendon McCullum, Daniel Vettori, James Franklin, Kyle Mills, Shane Bond, Mark Gillespie, Michael Mason, Jeetan Patel.
Australia: Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting , Brad Hodge, Michael Clarke, Andrew Symonds, Mike Hussey, Cameron White, Brett Lee, Mitchell Johnson, Nathan Bracken, Glenn McGrath, Shaun Tait, Brad Hogg.
