Andrew Strauss was a relieved man after hitting a timely century for England on a rain-hit final day of the last warm-up match for the Test series with New Zealand.

The Middlesex left-hander, who was dropped for the pre-Test tour to Sri Lanka after going 25 Test innings without a century, needed runs to confirm his place at Seddon Park on Wednesday after failing in both the two-day match earlier this week and in the first innings of this three-day match.

But he hit a superb 104 today - his first England century since scoring 116 against Pakistan at Headingley in August, 2006 - while Ian Bell finished unbeaten on the same score as the tourists advanced into a 185-run lead by reaching 325 for seven when rain halted play early in the afternoon.

"I felt I needed a score to justify the faith that was put in me, more than anything," said Strauss, who hit 15 boundaries in his 241 minutes at the crease.

"You can put yourself under too much pressure as well, so I wasn't losing sleep at night or anything. It's one of those things where you need to transfer what's going on in the nets out into the middle and have the right mindset. I managed to get that a little bit better over the last couple of days.

"It just needs you to be mentally right and I think that's the only thing that wasn't quite right previously and I got into a better mental state for that innings and it was good to see some runs on the board."

With both Strauss and Bell scoring runs, it means the only members of the top six not to have scored a fifty in the warm-up matches are captain Michael Vaughan and allrounder Paul Collingwood.

Strauss added: "It's so crucial early on a tour to get time in the middle. We've been on tours previously where batsmen have struggled in tour games and then you're almost playing catch up once the Test match comes along.

"It's good that I got some runs and that Belly got some runs as well and hopefully the other guys will make hay once they get into the Test match."

England are expecting both Collingwood and left-arm seamer Ryan Sidebottom, who are both suffering with right hamstring strains, to recover in time to push their claims for a Test spot.

It gives England a fully-fit squad to choose from and Strauss said: "I think we're getting there. The hard part of the tour is arriving, building up slowly and suddenly you have to sharpen up.

"Maybe we weren't as sharp as we could have been at the start of this game and we paid the price for it, but it was good to see as the game wore on that we learned from our mistakes and got better and better as the game wore on - hopefully we can take that momentum into the first Test match."