Venue: Lord's, 1045 BST. Coverage: Test Match Special on Radio 4 & Freeview channel 706. Over-by-over coverage on BBC Sport website.

It's a shame Collingwood is not playing in this last match of this New Zealand tour.

Despite a little incident, this tour by New Zealand has been entertaining.

Pietersen has his hands full with England's fragile batting, not helped by the absence of Collingwood.
Whoever wins tomorrow, I hope the game is played in the same friendly spirit that has been between the two sides for 99% of the time.
My money is on New Zealand with England in turmoil, let's see Pietersen prove me wrong.

Please place your pre match and match comments on this thread.

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Ern

Weather forecsat per the BBC is for sunny intervals and 23C. Sounds like a great day for cricket!

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Spike Milligan

CricInfo predicts Cook opening with Bell, which I think could easily become a problem for England, not only in this but in the next three ODIs. I'm probably in the minority here, but I think Andrew Strauss, in the form he's in, would be a better opening partner, being a faster scorer than both Cook and Bell. With this partnership, the New Zealand bowlers could tie them down very easily, which only makes Pietersen's, Bopara's etc. jobs that much harder.

If you look back through Cook ODI innings in NZ a few months ago he was not scoring slowly: 53 off 69 balls and 69 off 88 balls mean a SR of approaching 80... and from the four innings in which he got a start this year, Bell has posted 208 at an average of 52 with a SR of 85.24.

I like the new side: Luke Wright is stuffed back down the order (where he belongs) and aside from the desirability of Mustard's glovework the side looks fine.

His series SR was 66.4. I think that like most other batsmen, he must have accelerated as he faced more balls, and I think you'll find that up until his first 50-odd balls his scoring was too slow. Bell's improved in this regard, and he still scores a decent amount of runs, and I'd like to see Cook improve his scoring rate without having to change his approach too drastically.

Cook isn't the right kind of batsman for ODI Cricket and in any case by playing him they've lost bowling resources - Mascarenhas would have been a better option.

You might be interested to hear that Ambrose dropped an absolute sitter early this morning off Anderson and would have been the first wicket breakthrough of How, he dropped it. With his lack of runs, he's not done enough to secure the WK spot in the short format.

228-5 with Styris and even Elliot doing some big hitting now

Good 50 from Oram have them the chance to big hit for the last 3 overs now, 250 will be a challenging target, but England will fancy it.

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I think you're right, Navdeep - England would have fancied 250 as a target. NZ actually finished on 266-5, with 96 of those coming off the last ten overs. I think that's probably going to leave England as marginal favourities, but someone is going to need to send up some fireworks - and it's not going to be England's openers.

A good afternoon to come, starting at 1500 BST.

Just seen the odds from Bet365, and they have this game on a knife edge, with both teams quoted at 6/5 on to win.

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Money won't buy you friends. But it gets you a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan

excellent knock from styris...267 will be a challenging target for england....i wish styris hit this kind of form in the IPL when he was playing for my home team Deccan Chargers. match is superbly poised!!!

Yep, heard that on totals here at Lords with the total above 260, 8 times it has been reached, 7 times it hasnt, tight stuff.

Gillespie has bowled a great opening spell and has a deserved wkt of Bell, although Mills has struggled. With Southee on red hot form to come (despite a good surface) and Vettori on a turning wicket, its still balanced yet.

Be interesting to see how an out of form KP bats too, with the added responsibility of being the skip.

EDIT: Southee strikes in his 1st over, thats 11 wickets in the series so far, game on!

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Hoggy Hoggy Hoggy...OI OI OI!!!