England, who caught brilliantly at Hamilton and lost, missed a succession of chances in Wellington yesterday but should still have won the second Test by lunchtime today. New Zealand started the final day morning with four wickets still in hand but with another 196 runs to win.

For the home team all apparently depended on their captain and vice-captain, the last pair of recognised batsmen, Daniel Vettori and Brendon McCullum. For England a night's rest should have eased stiff muscles and calmed them down after a weekend in which their cricket lacked consistency and conviction.

At least their captain was at the top of his game mentally in the grey evening light yesterday when he returned the field after half an hour's absence because of a tight hamstring.

Michael Vaughan's bold gamble in taking the new ball when the umpires were vacillating over the state of the light may have saved his team from the possibility of being on the wrong end of a fourth innings record. Not only is 418 - twenty runs more than New Zealand's target- the highest winning fourth innings score in any Test but 286 is the most that New Zealand have ever made in the last innings of a game at the Basin Reserve.

From an England viewpoint there was an ominous look to the sixth wicket partnership of 69 between the experienced pairing of McCullum, playing as boldly as ever and Jacob Oram, who had settled after an extremly fortunate start to his innings.

The umpires had already had the teams off for eight minutes after 70 overs and, when it resumed, England were obliged to bring on Kevin Pietersen for an over to persuade them to keep the cricket going. Vaughan took his chance, however, when 80 overs had been bowled, handed the new ball to Ryan Sidebottom and the left-arm swing duly did the trick when Oram went for a drive and sliced it to Pietersen in a fifth slip position.

England had certainly needed to make better use of the secnd new ball than they had of the the first and to improve greatly on their error-strewn performance on the fourth day. They were blown a long way off course at times both by the capricious blusters from the Cook Strait and the frequent incompetence of their fielding. Perhaps, after all, there is a job for Richard Halsall, who takes up his post as the ECB's new fielding expert after Easter.

Apart from the customary donation of a four overthrow runs to the opposition from an unnecessary misdirected throw to the wicket-keeper, and some more sloppy groundfielding, they dropped no fewer than five possible catches, two of them almost routine.

In addition to one of those snicks to a 'keeper standing up to a medium-pacer, Collingwood, that either stick or do not, Tim Ambrose more culpably missed a stumping that sounded uncomfortable echoes of recent times. Monty Panesar should have had three wickets but finished the day with none.

Sealing a victory must help a good deal but there seems still to be an extraordinary lack of confidence about this England team, whether they are batting or bowling. They were in a position after two days, 144 runs ahead with ten wickets in hand, from which they really had to win barring anything truly exceptional; but on a gloriously sunny Saturday they batted with the wary caution of elderly walkers on a cliff top path. Alastair Cook's solidity at the start and Paul Collinwgwood's shrewd batting at No. six ensured in the end that New Zealand would be asked to grasp for something almost certainly beyond their reach but on a Sunday when the renowned Wellington southerly blew with traditional force, the peformance in the field was no more authoritative.

It did not help, naturally, that James Anderson has his suspect left ankle - it had troubled him in Sri Lanka- strapped- and during the day restrapped- after turning it over in a game of non-contact football after the close the previous evening. Bowling into the breeze he was nothing like the dangerous bowler of the first innings, his only wicket coming foruitously after tea when he got a brief chance down the breeze. It was the lofty Stuart Broad who used the conditions best, keeping up both good control and a decent pace despite being officially warned by Rudi Koertzen for following through too close to the stumps.

After Jamie How had been caught at short -leg off bat and pad, Matthew Bell and Stephen Fleming, in his last innings on his home ground, saw the shine off the new ball before, in the ninth over of a well sustained spell broad had Bell caught behind off an outside edge and Fleming bowled, shouldering arms. Until then both he and Bell had left the ball well close to their off stumps. A forceful stand followed between Mathew Sinclair and the imposing Ross Taylor but Sinclair wafted loosely to cover after tea and Taylor finally hit across the line.