Lynn McConnell at Eden Park
New Zealand had been on the receiving end of the Duckworth Lewis system in the first Auckland One-Day International with Australia, but when benefiting from it on Thursday night, the home team was unable to capitalise on the advantage.
Rain during the dinner break eventually reduced the game to a 34-over contest with Australia facing a reduced run target of 200 to win, a target it achieved for the loss of only four wickets.
"It gave us an opportunity but once again, Bondy and I put some pressure on with the ball but we couldn't maintain it from both ends and that really hurts against Australia," captain Daniel Vettori said.
Vettori said the loss came down to the same problems the side had in its earlier losses – not putting enough runs on the board.
New Zealand had lost too many wickets, and put itself under too much pressure to avoid the consequences against a team like Australia, he said.
"I think if you look at most of the dismissals they are relatively soft dismissals, they're just poor mistakes and whether it is the mental shift from aggressiveness to accumulation I'm not too sure but they're mistakes that shouldn't happen constantly and they have in these last three games," he said.
New Zealand couldn't be happy with its performance because it had put itself under too much pressure throughout the series.
It had got off to a great start and it had been good to see Brendon McCullum and Martin Guptill, opening for the first time in the series, putting bad balls away but in the end it wasn't enough as the rest of the side hadn't been able to contribute.
He did acknowledge Daryl Tuffey's blazing innings but added that apart from him, New Zealand had been 'pretty poor'.
"I think we knew were under a par score and so we had to be aggressive and we had to take a chance, if we had kept going the way we were we wouldn't have had a total to defend."
New Zealand would attempt to use the dead match in Wellington on Saturday as a step on the road to improvement, he said, adding that Nathan McCullum, the off-spinner, was likely to come into consideration on Westpac Stadium.