Drumm and Lewis complement rookie bowling attack

New Zealand lengthened a remarkable period of dominance over England when securing a comfortable seven-wicket win in their pool match at the World Series of Women's Cricket at the High Performance Centre at Lincoln University next Christchurch today.

Australia may be the deserved favourite to win the World Series but New Zealand showed again today they are developing a potentially exciting side for their future.

At the same time England have continued their fall from dominance in the game and they have now gone 33 games without beating either New Zealand or Australia, 17 times losing to New Zealand in a row and 16 times against Australia.

Not since the World Cup final of 1993 have England beaten New Zealand.

While today's win was ultimately made possible by the more experienced batting hands of Emily Drumm and Maia Lewis, who batted the team home to their seven-wicket victory, there were clear signs of talent emerging on the bowling front.

Drumm was out when the scores were tied for 93 off 115 balls while Lewis finished on 32 off 77 balls. They shared a 120-run stand in 160 balls.

Their batting was a textbook example of how to take the sting out of a bowling side buoyed by picking up two key wickets. They took their time to get the measure of the pitch, and the bowling, and then launched an impressive assault.

The first 50 runs of their stand took 86 balls but the second 50 only 51 balls.

Drumm was in commanding form with some well-timed cut shots and sweeps being backed with some hefty blows struck to the mid-wicket and long on region.

Lewis, while not scoring quite as freely, struck some powerful off and cover drives that were laser-like in their precision for piercing the field.

New Zealand came into the tournament without experienced bowlers Rachel Pullar (unavailable) and Anna Corbin (injured) but the players selected are showing signs that they could be extremely useful by the time of the next World Cup in 2005 in South Africa.

Medium pacer Amanda Green is only 18 years old and taking part in her first international series, but she demonstrated impressive understanding of her role when coming on and wringing the freedom out of the England batting with her first spell of six overs which cost only five runs.

She came back for her last four overs, including the last of the innings, and ended with one wicket for 19 runs.

Her choice of length and unrelenting accuracy resulted in her best performance so far in the tournament.

Off spinner Aimee Mason was probably brought into the attack sooner than New Zealand would have wanted as the opening bowlers struggled for their direction but, like Green, she did just what was required and bowled unchanged for her 10 overs to take one for 31.

That stemmed the tide of runs and forced England to take more risks and Rebecca Steele, the 18-year-old left-arm spinner who likes to give the ball plenty of loop was ideally equipped to handle the situation and she also took toll of the English to finish with three for 31.

England also aided New Zealand with some poor decision-making in their calling for runs and three key players, Claire Taylor, Sarah Collyer, who was promoted to an opening role in the side, and Laura Spragg were each run out by some distance.

As well as instituting some batting changes with Collyer opening with Kathryn Leng, England also used Nicki Shaw as an opening bowler in partnership with Lucy Pearson. Neither were especially successful moves but with fine tuning may offer some tactical variation in the future.

Collyer did top score for the side with 39, but they came off 89 balls. Pearson bowled eight overs for 27 runs while Clare Taylor took one for 32 from her 10. Shaw took one for 34 from seven overs.

England now need to beat India in either of their last two meetings, on Thursday and in the third place playoff match on Saturday, to avoid suffering a whitewash in the tournament.

New Zealand's next two games are both against Australia, the second being the final on Saturday.