Adam Parore: Lost day means we're in with a chance

Having the second test at the Basin reduced to four days will make a huge difference to the Black Caps.

They know they can keep pace with the Australians for four days. Mentally they will grow a leg now and really believe they can be competitive.

The contest has changed shape greatly. Given the chance, I expect New Zealand to bowl first on a wicket which will inevitably have greened up after being under the covers for a day.

If you look back - and a number of tests in Wellington have lost the first day - the team bowling first in these circumstances gets right amongst it.

It would mean, however, no place for Paul Wiseman. You can't pick two spinners and bowl first. Iain O'Brien will surely play.

I read with interest Glenn McGrath's comments regarding his longevity in the game and how he has achieved it. Here is a guy who has been playing for as long as anyone can remember (he started before me - I played for NZ for about 12 years and have been retired for a good few now as well) and is now closing in on 500 wickets.

His comments on the importance of fitness were spot on. If you want to play for a long time you have to do the work and this is something NZ players have not yet grasped. From a young age our focus is on the short term. Going for a run or working out in the gym is not going to help you score more runs or take more wickets tomorrow. Everything is focused on the here and now. We need to start teaching our young players to think beyond that.

The gym work won't show immediate results but it will help you play at the highest level for 10 to 12 years rather than five or six. It will mean that we will never again need to use 14 bowlers in a season.

In my time players used to look at fat little guys like David Boon and say you didn't need to be fit to play.

Not these days. With the amount of cricket demanded from our players today, going to the nets and playing in the middle is not enough.

But for the current squad, talk of fitness training is too late.

We need to look to the current crop of 15 to 18-year-olds and work on starting, and then sustaining, a fitness base.

These younger players have to work for five or six years on building that base before they start playing full-time cricket. Once they have the base they will be sweet but there are no shortcuts - you need to do the yards.

The goal needs to be not to play for the Black Caps, but to play 100 tests.

If I was a young player now that would be my goal - that's the magic mark these days.

You have a look at all the guys who have achieved the mark to date. Want your name next to them? Damned straight you do. How do you do it? You need conditioning.

Right through my career I used to run home from cricket; not always but often enough to call it regular. By the time I played for the Black Caps at 19 I was running 70km a week and going to the gym five to six days a week. I was still playing 12 years later and hardly missed a game.

Everyone thought I was crackers but it was something I always enjoyed. I was, after all, looking after my career - giving myself the best chance to get picked for my country again. And again. And again.

McGrath has the same attitude. The hard yards are paying off and you can see the pleasure he is getting out of the realisation that now he can really enjoy his best years.

The shame of it all is that our best bowlers are being deprived of the opportunity to enjoy themselves at the peak of their powers because their bodies have given up the ghost.

Imagine a line-up that included Dion Nash, Shane Bond, Chris Cairns and Simon Doull walking out to make first use of a green one at the Basin this morning. If that were the case even I'd still be playing ...