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HOBART - The thought of tonight's welcome home press conference in Auckland was hardly filling New Zealand cricket captain Daniel Vettori with Christmas cheer.
Vettori leads his players home after nine tough weeks on the road, demanding an instant improvement on familiar home soil for upcoming series against Bangladesh and England.
He expected an inquisition from New Zealand fans about their performances in South Africa and Australia, where they farewelled the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy one-day series with a 114-run loss here yesterday when chasing 283 to win.
"It has been tough - you can't hide behind that fact. Whenever you head home after a long tour, most guys pick up, they have a couple of days at home and hopefully a chance to refresh," Vettori said.
"I still back our guys to beat Bangladesh, but the performances we've been giving so far don't lend themselves to a lot of guys being confident.
"Hopefully being back home, the knowledge you need to get selected for an England series which is going to be one of the big series you play in your career, will bring performances out against Bangladesh."
Their only two victories were in the South Africa tour opener against an Invitation 11, and in the second one-dayer against South Africa in Port Elizabeth.
Batting was the biggest worry, with Brendon McCullum's century against the Australian Chairman's 11 in Perth the only triple-figure score by a New Zealand batsman in more than two months on tour.
McCullum was a rare success story of the tour with a majestic 96 in Adelaide, before two misses in Sydney and Hobart.
Yesterday saw the now-familiar collapse to 88 for seven as they chased a big score to beat Australia.
None of the dismissals were from unplayable deliveries and there were plenty of loose shots.
"Hugely disappointing. It's been a long, long tour and the fact you have one chance to redeem a bit of that tough stuff and you put in a batting performance like that," Vettori said.
"I thought 280 wasn't too much over a good score. If we restricted them to 260 we would have been really comfortable."
Later, a grim-faced New Zealand selector Sir Richard Hadlee had to join his former opponent Ian Chappell in presenting the series trophy to man-of-the-match Ricky Ponting.
Opener Lou Vincent paid the price for his poor form and was axed for yesterday's match, with Vettori indicating a low tolerance policy for continued batting failures.
"It just got to that point where we'd given him (Vincent) a lot of chances and he hadn't scored runs for a period of time.
"If we had more guys knocking on the door maybe we would have dropped him earlier but we haven't had that."
Peter Fulton is waiting to return to the side after playing again for Canterbury after knee surgery but most of the incumbents will get a chance to make amends.
Vettori hoped the feel-good holiday atmosphere at the one-day venues of Auckland (December 26), Napier (December 28) and Queenstown (December 31) would inspire some improved batting efforts going into the two tests against Bangladesh ahead of England's arrival in February.
"It's going to be a tough trip home and I expect the airport media won't be much fun. After that hopefully we can start turning things around come Boxing Day."
- NZPA
