Bracewell puzzled over batting slump

John Bracewell, the New Zealand coach, is at a loss to explain his side's disappointing batting in their opening two CB Series games. The team's runs began to dry up at the Champions Trophy in October and since that time they have passed 250 only twice from ten matches.

New Zealand lost their last seven wickets for 23 against Australia on Sunday as they crashed to be all out for 184 and two days later against England they managed to set a target of only 206. Their poor efforts came barely a week after they were dismissed for 73, their second-lowest ODI score, against Sri Lanka at Auckland.

Bracewell said it was obvious the top order needed to stand up. "We are in what you would call a batting slump at the moment, collectively," Bracewell told the Herald Sun. "I tell them to relax, go out there and play your game, rotate the strike, get off strike. All the things you can list down in a coaching manual or what a coach would say.

"They are working hard, they are doing what appears to be physically all the right things. Mentally, they are looking at their game. You think that we are getting close, but we were 30 runs short [against England] on a wicket that suited us."

Bracewell said there was no simple solution that would get all the players back in form at the same time. "I can't quite put my finger on it," he said in the New Zealand Herald. "Form is a fickle thing and to suggest everyone's lacking confidence is a bit simplistic.

"Each guy will have a different issue. Some of them have technical issues, some may be lacking confidence but we can't bracket them all together. It just so happens that a lot of them are out of form at the same time."