New Zealand cricket captain Daniel Vettori is “pretty happy” to be playing Bangladesh soon, but knows his next media conference “won’t be much fun”.

Certainly, it will be an interesting few days for the embattled Kiwis when they return home after a barren and at-times controversial overseas tour.

South Africa dominated their Test series and Australia have now dispatched them 2-0 to regain the Chappell-Hadlee one-day trophy.

Vettori made the light-hearted comment about Bangladesh, New Zealand’s next opponent, at today’s post-match presentation in Hobart.

Australia had just walloped his team by 114 runs in game three.

But Vettori knows there will be little humour when the team fronts the local media.

“I expect the airport media won’t be much fun,” he said.

Vettori described this series as “hugely disappointing” and said Australia were well ahead of them.

“Australia are well out in front on us at the moment, the consistency of their performance,” he said.

“It probably gives us a great idea of where we need to get to, to actually compete at the world stage.”

Apart from being outplayed, New Zealand also came off second-best with some comments about the Australians.

They questioned the bowling action of Shaun Tait and then speculated about why Adam Gilchrist was resting from today’s match, with neither controversy playing out well for them.

Today, their decision to play Mark Gillespie backfired, with his eight overs yielding 1-68.

Gillespie batted well for his 24, but at No.10 he was not picked for his strokeplay.

Vettori also spoke yesterday about developing the team more in one-day cricket by batting first.

But he decided to put Australia in when he won the toss today.

New Zealand put the early squeeze on the home side, before Ricky Ponting and Andrew Symond took the momentum away from them completely with their 114-run stand.

“It just purely came down to a little bit of the conditions, we obviously thought there was some rain about,” Vettori said.

“We wanted to give ourselves a chance in terms of that.

“It’s also just the one-off nature of a game, the fact that probably chasing has been our strength in the past, something we’ve done really well … play to our strengths.”

Ponting defended Vettori’s decision, saying he would have batted first as well, but thinks the New Zealanders’ favoured tactic of chasing was not well-suited to the Bellerive Oval pitch.

“There’s no such thing as a mistake (with the toss), they’ve just not played well enough when they’ve bowled first to win the game,” he said.

“They would have bowled first for a reason and that’s because they like chasing runs and have done well against us in the past chasing big scores.

“The conditions down here probably don’t suit that style of play – they’ve chased big scores against us in New Zealand, when it’s got a bit dewy and the wicket has actually gotten better.

“Chasing runs out here, where the wicket does dry up and gets a fair bit slower and harder to bat on, was always going to be difficult for them.”

© 2007 AAP

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