NZ onslaught made the difference - Hussain

New Zealand's batting onslaught under floodlights on Tuesday evening cost England the third Test, England captain Nasser Hussain said on Wednesday.

New Zealand, who declared at their overnight total of 269 for nine declared, dismissed England on Wednesday for 233 to win the match by 78 runs and square the series.

At one stage Hussain appealed to umpire Srinivas Venkataraghavan to take the teams off the field because his fielders were having difficulty sighting the red ball under floodlights.

"He agreed with me," Hussain said. "But he pointed out that in the history of the game no fielding side was taken off for bad light and I would have to talk to the ICC about it. I had no real problem with that.

"The last thing I want to do is be like a whingeing England captain after a great Test, but things like fielding under floodlights has to be looked at by the ICC. That's not the players' job, but the administrators."

Hussain said there had been some fascinating cricket played throughout the series.

"New Zealand are a very resilient side and they are very hard to break down," he said. "We knew that and we knew we would have to be at our best. We were off for an hour, maybe two hours in this game and we got naught."

Hussain said he was not concerned that New Zealand had gone to fourth place ahead of England in the ICC Test championship.

"I'm not interested in the Test table," he said. "I'm more interested in how we are going to beat Sri Lanka next summer and how on earth are we going to win an Ashes series.

"We've got a lot of young guys breaking into Test cricket like Andy Flintoff, Ashley Giles, James Foster and Matthew Hoggard. These blokes coming along and doing well is good for English cricket.

"We need to get more runs and get these 20s and 30s out of our system. We'll do better then, but we have also got to keep positive, as we were at the beginning of today."

New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming said the win was a great tonic and a fine end to the season for his side, who leave next week for a one-day tournament in Sharjah followed immedately by a tour of Pakistan and then the West Indies.

"We had a couple of players in their last Test and it was New Zealand's 50th Test victory, so this one was really important to us," Fleming said. "We had to up the ante in this match. We had been outplayed in Christchurch and Wellington, but we were on top in this match at crucial times. We had better discipline and better quality of play and it was very satisfying."

Mail Cricket Editor