Wellington's Basin Reserve is built on an area of marshland that rose up during an earthquake in 1855 and was subsequently drained to form a field, and today a howling nor'westerly wind and horizontal rain threatened to reduce the ground to the quagmire it once was. Play was officially called off for the day at 12.30pm, when umpires Darrell Hair and Steve Dunne, and match referee Jackie Hendriks, braved the gale that was blowing in from the Cook Straits, walked out to the middle, and immediately walked back to the pavilion. The stadium has had problems with drainage in the past, and the groundstaff indicated that - even if the rain did stop lashing down - they would have needed four hours to get the game under way. A pitch that Duncan Fletcher today described as "under-prepared" when he inspected it two days ago could be a bowlers' paradise when play eventually begins.

It was an apocalyptic scene. Mount Victoria to the east, and Mount Cook to the west, sat dark and forbidding in the background as black skies emptied themselves by the bucketload. The wind was so strong that you imagined it would blow all the bad weather away, but it simply blew more in. The players, including the fresh-faced Ian Bell, who looked comfortable in his new England tracksuit, had already left the stadium at 11am, and only a couple of coachfuls of English tourists hung around much beyond noon. Locals shrugged their shoulders and bemoaned a dreadful summer.

Neither side has announced its final XI yet, although Daniel Vettori is now almost certainly fit enough to play. England have named an unchanged XII from the first Test, and are hoping Mark Butcher will be able to take the field after cracking his right thumb at Christchurch. Fletcher said that another 24 hours' rest for Butcher could make all the difference. "The time off has to be an advantage to us, but we'll just have to have another check tomorrow," he said. "Mark seemed very confident this morning. Batting was not a problem, it was just the catching that was an issue."

Asked whether Butcher would field in the slips, Fletcher replied, "We'll just have to wait and see when we do finally test him. We have to decide whether we can take the gamble." England might decide that they need an extra seamer if the pitch looks green, which would mean a recall for Craig White, possibly at the expense of Mark Ramprakash.

Stephen Fleming said yesterday that the weather could be to New Zealand's advantage because it would make the game more of a lottery. Not only does that sound slightly desperate - after all, he's implying that New Zealand need help from the pitch to even things out a bit - but at the moment it also sounds optimistic: more rain is forecast for tomorrow, and although the weekend is supposed to be brighter, a result in three days is pushing it.

Sir Richard Hadlee tried to put a brave face on matters. "We need you to say that four days will be enough to force a result," joked one local journalist, desperate to fill some column inches. "Three should do it," quipped Hadlee with a grin. It was a day when gags were at a premium.

Teams
New Zealand (probable): 1 Matthew Horne, 2 Mark Richardson, 3 Lou Vincent, 4 Stephen Fleming (capt), 5 Nathan Astle, 6 Craig McMillan, 7 Adam Parore (wk), 8 Chris Harris, 9 Daniel Vettori, 10 Ian Butler, 11 Chris Drum, 12 Chris Martin, 13 Daryl Tuffey.

England (probable): 1 Marcus Trescothick, 2 Michael Vaughan, 3 Mark Butcher, 4 Nasser Hussain (capt), 5 Graham Thorpe, 6 Andrew Flintoff, 7 Craig White, 8 Ashley Giles, 9 James Foster (wk), 10 Andrew Caddick, 11 Matthew Hoggard, 12 Mark Ramprakash.

Lawrence Booth is assistant editor of Wisden.com. Read his reports here throughout the series.

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