Captain Brendon McCullum says bowling first will provide New Zealand with their best chance of toppling England in the second Test at a bone dry Basin Reserve in Wellington.
McCullum is set to ignore any fatigue among his pace platoon and send the tourists in to bat if successful with the toss on Thursday.
Taking 20 English wickets will be a sizeable task on a pitch lacking grass cover, as proved to be the case in the drawn first Test at Dunedin last week, when just 25 wickets fell.
McCullum’s preference should come as no surprise. New Zealand have won the toss in six of the last seven Wellington Tests and opted to bowl first in all but one.
“If there’s any advantage, it’s normally on day one,” McCullum said.
“We’ve seen some huge runs scored domestically, even on wickets that are four, five, or even six matches old.
“I wouldn’t expect this one to break up a great deal. Then again if you cop a decent swinging day, then you can knock the top off reasonably quickly.”
McCullum opted to bowl first in Dunedin as well.
The only other toss he has won in three Tests in charge since replacing Ross Taylor was his first, when he surprisingly chose to bat first against South Africa in Cape Town two months ago. His team crumbled for 45 inside 20 overs.
The Basin Reserve looks nothing like the green strip used at Newlands but McCullum is prepared to throw seamers Tim Southee, Trent Boult and Neil Wagner the ball, even though the trio sent down 114 overs between them over the final two days at Dunedin.
They have put their feet up since and McCullum doesn’t expected tiredness to be a factor.
He remains upbeat about the Dunedin performance, pointing out that New Zealand dictated terms and were quite possibly denied victory by the loss of four early sessions to wet weather.
“Our bowlers were huge for us, obviously bowling them out for 167 on the first innings was a huge effort – albeit with some loose strokeplay. I think that was created through the pressure that we built up.
“We’ve got the bowlers to be able to take 20 wickets.”
McCullum said New Zealand will field the same starting 11, leaving batsman Tom Latham and seamer Ian Butler to fill the support roles.