The numbers behind New Zealand's Hadlee-Chappell series whitewash

Australian teammates congratulate Steven Smith, third from left, after catching out New Zealand's BJ Watling during their one day international cricket match. Photo / AP.

Looking for reasons for New Zealand's hefty loss to Australia? Try the numbers for a start.

Australia dominated the averages in batting and bowling. New Zealand were second or third in all categories.

Opener David Warner carried on his champion year, with 299 runs at 99.66, followed by captain Steve Smith's 236 at 78.66.

New Zealand's best was opener Martin Guptill's 193 runs at 64.33. He had a creditable series; but Australia's two heavy hitters were the series' deciders.

New Zealand were caught up in a whirlwind of Warner and Smith, who have the two best batting figures in all ODI cricket this year.

Warner is a man alone at the top of ODI batting this year.

In 23 innings, he's scored 1388 runs at 63.09, with seven hundreds and four fifties.

Smith is second with 1154 runs at 50.17 from 25 innings, with three hundreds, seven fifties.

New Zealand's best? Guptill's 706 from only 15 innings at 47.06, with two tons and four fifties.

The Australians are chuffed to have speedster Pat Cummins back and firing alongside Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood.

Cummins took eight wickets at 16.12 in the series; Hazlewood six at 18.83 and Starc six at 20.5.

Again, New Zealand couldn't compete. Their best was Trent Boult's six at 30.

Five of the eight most successful ODI bowlers this year are Aussies. Legspinner Adam Zampa has 30 wickets at 27.8, but was only sighted once in this series, while seamer John Hastings has been dropped.

However Starc (26 at 19.69), Hazlewood (26 at 25.23) and James Faulkner (24 at 31.9) were regulars.

New Zealand can put up a counter argument with only Boult's 25 wickets at 25 apiece.

In captain Kane Williamson's estimation, it was a case of one team playing very good cricket; and another off the best, hence the disparity in performances.

''When you're playing a side like Australia and the way they're playing at the moment which is very, very well, you need to have all those areas going well for you.

''You need to be playing your best cricket. That's one thing we'll look back on, not having really fired in all departments which would have given us a chance.

''As a one-day unit we like to fight, scrap, those sorts of words which we've shown for a long period of time.

''It's something we want to recapture because those sorts of words epitomise what we do in the field and it was nice to see a bit more of that today but we want to continue that."