The tests saw a comfortable series win for England. The Twenty20 also saw a comfortable win for England.

Sunday sees the start of the third format, the 50 overs ODI's.

Will it be a clean sweep for England, or will history repeat itself and replicate the pattern of the previous series between these two in Zealand earlier this year.

On that occasion too England won the Test series and the two Twenty20 matches, but got comprehensively beaten 3-1 in the 50 over format.

I believe history will repeat itself again and am confident that the Kiwi's can turn it around and again be kings in this format.

Kiwis are ranked no3 in the world in this format, they reached the semi finals of the last world cup and overall I believe they have more likely match winners then England.

Jacob Oram is likely to miss the series, but they still have the likes of McCullum, Taylor and Vettori.

None of these came to the party in the Twenty20 game, but there is a world of difference between 20 overs and 50 overs, and though the Kiwis will have been disappointed by their performance on Friday, they know it won't have much bearing in this longer format.

England will obviously be full of confidence and of course they very capable of winning, but the general 1.6 represents terrible value in this format.

New Zealand are best priced 2.5 and I consider this to be the exceptional value for this first encounter on Sunday and therefore my strong suggestion is:

BACK New Zealand for 3 points @ 2.5 on Sportingbet.

Bigjoe