WELLINGTON, Jan 31: England will try to sustain the momentum of back-to-back one-day series wins when they take on New Zealand next month, coach Peter Moores said on Thursday.

England beat India at home and won 3-2 in Sri Lanka in November, showing a marked improvement from their dismal 2007 World Cup campaign in the West Indies.

“Our goal is to mentally get back to the place we finished against Sri Lanka,” Moores told the New Zealand Press Association. “If we do things right we’ll be hard to beat.”

New Zealand have lost experienced players including Stephen Fleming, Craig McMillan and Shane Bond from the side that beat England comprehensively during the group stages of the World Cup.

“We’ll take nothing for granted,” Moores said. “We haven’t heard much about some of their players but it sounds as if they’ve brought in some aggressive cricketers.”

England play one-day matches against Canterbury on Saturday and Sunday. The first of two Twenty20 games against New Zealand is on Tuesday in Auckland followed by five One-day Internationals from Feb 9 to 23.—Reuters