Chris Cairns: Sweet win but still a bitter loss

Although we chased down a world record total last night, it was a bittersweet feeling because, at the end of the day, we lost the series.

Coming into the match we simply had to stop the rot and put our dismal record of late behind us - eight losses against Australia and seven on the trot - we needed to discover how to win again.

We were disappointed with how meekly we had batted in Auckland and vowed to play with greater resolve in Wellington. We did that, but were left absolutely gutted on the back of a brilliant piece of fielding from Michael Clarke. It's what we call one per cent stuff - the hours and hours players put into practice for moments exactly like that.

It gave us a great deal of confidence, however, to get so close and after last night we feel no total is too big for us to chase. We have so much depth in our batting line-up that totals above 300 don't frighten us.

What's doubly pleasing is that we have guys who might not be in the best of nick but their time will come. People are contributing at the right time and last night it was Scott Styris, and he was brilliantly backed up by the tail.

People might point to the fact it was done against an attack missing the likes of Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee, but it's irrelevant because you have to do the job against whoever you come up against.

We didn't have Shane Bond, for example, and Australia had their top batting order throughout the series.

There will be arguments that we conceded too many runs at the death in our last two games, but they need to remember we also managed to score 100 runs against Australia in the final 10 overs. It happened to them, too.

I think it's a reflection of the modern era and what Twenty20 has done for the game. No longer is 60 or 70 runs off the final 10 overs good enough - now we're looking at 70-90, or more, and it's lifting the bar in terms of what is good scoring.

Bowling at the death, though, is something we will need to look at and improve but it is getting more and more difficult to curb the type of hitting we have seen in this series. One thing we will have to try to improve on is our accuracy.

There have been some people in our side who have really stepped up in this series.

Kyle Mills has really come of age as a front-line bowler and he's going to be a great asset in the future.

Daniel Vettori we sometimes take for granted - we expect performances like we have seen from him in recent times but he continues to churn it out. He's simply world class.

And Brendon McCullum is someone whose stocks in the game continue to rise. His hitting in the last two games was nothing short of phenomenal.