New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming admitted that after the success in the Test series the pressure was on his team to do well in the one-dayers and said his bowlers would find it more difficult to contain Indian batsmen in the shorter version of the game.

"We have to perform. We are not the most in-form batting unit there has been but we have some good one-day players," Fleming said ahead of the first of the seven one-day internationals in Aukland on Thursday.

The Kiwi skipper was happy with his bowlers and said his pacemen had given tremendous confidence to the team.

"I think the bowlers feel pretty good about themselves against these batsmen and because of it the team too feels confident. Our bowlers have a good enough chance to keep [themselves] on top of them [Indians]... but keeping an edge on these players is going to be very difficult," he said.

A lot of improvement is required in the batting department, he said. "Our working singles off spinners is pretty poor. We need to have general efficiency in every department."

In the past one year only Chris Cairns, Stephen Fleming and Craig McMillan have averaged better than 30 in one-day internationals. Even New Zealand's most successful one-day batsman Nathan Astle could average just 27.15.

Fleming said the inclusion of Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble in India's one-day squad proved that the Indians were looking to add experience to their bowling department.

"They have had a lot of success and are quality bowlers, so if they are introduced by John Wright it would be another dimension to their team," he said. "I guess that the benefit from our point of view is that we have seen a lot of them in one-day cricket. We have got footage and we know how to play them on paper, but doing that on the field against quality players is another thing."

Fleming himself is looking to bat well in Thursday's day-night game as an opener and improve his dismal record at the venue where he has scored only 395 runs from 18 games at an average of 23.24.

Eden Park groundsman Mark Perham is delighted with the way his portable pitch has come up for this game. The pitch has good grass cover, which was drying off in the heat of Auckland's sun and promises good batting conditions by the time the match gets going on Thursday afternoon.

Fleming too was delighted with the facilities and said his batsmen were screaming for good practice after miserable weather during the last few weeks. "It was good for us to get some practice and even on Christmas day, some of us would be doing work at Eden Park."

Looking back at the Test series, Fleming said that while attributing India's dismal batting display to the poor pitch conditions people forget that even his team had to bat on the same tracks.

"We've all said it was a unique Test series. I am very happy I had a side, which could compete. There has been a bit of focus on how tough it was for the Indian batsmen but we had to bat on it as well," Fleming said. "The point I want to put across is that we did enough to win. That way it's pretty pleasant."

Meanwhile, Srinath and Kumble, along with hard-hitting all-rounder Yuvraj Singh, joined the team. The other inclusion, Baroda paceman Rakesh Patel who was added to the team along with Ashish Nehra after the second Test, is expected to join the team soon.