Turnaround delights Ponting

Memories of the 0-3 loss to New Zealand in the 2007 Chappell-Hadlee Trophy series was a big motivation for several members of the Australian side who gained their revenge by knocking New Zealand out of the 2010 version in the fourth match, in Auckland on Thursday.

Captain Ricky Ponting said players did remember their last series, especially when they lost, and the added feature about 2007 was that the tour was the warm-up to the World Cup and a lot of people had been writing Australia off as a result.

Ponting was delighted with the way his side had responded to the disappointment of the first game loss to turn things around, especially when New Zealand had made good starts in each game.

"Sometimes it is hard to really reverse momentum in one-day cricket but we have been able to do that really well in the last few games in particular.

"I thought today was a really good example of that, the fact that they were off to such a flying start, we probably weren't our best with the ball early on but we probably just kept attacking, we set pretty attacking fields again and I just told the bowlers to keep hitting their areas and if they keep playing big shots hopefully we'll take some chances. And that's the way it worked out."

New Zealand had used the pace of the bowlers, and the pace off the wicket, especially well, but once the slower bowlers came on it was a lot harder to hit the ball away.

"We restricted them there, we took those boundaries and created the chances which we took, so once we started taking wickets the momentum got back in our favour it was going to be hard for them to post the figure they were looking to post earlier on," he said.

By attempting to put pressure on during the first 30 overs it made it difficult for New Zealand to get to the last overs with wickets in hand, a tactic that was borne out in the last two games.

With so little time between games it had been a good effort to turn things around the way Australia had.