New Zealand v England: Second Test ends in draw after rain washes out play After two months of drought it rained on England's parade today. The final day of the Second Test against New Zealand was abandoned shortly after lunch without a ball being bowled. The teams will now travel to Auckland for the third, last and now deciding Test of the series, level at 0-0, a scoreline which was predicted with neither frequency nor confidence before proceedings started. If the tourists have been surprised by the turn of events they did well to conceal it today after their opportunity to take the lead was doomed from the moment they pulled their hotel room curtains. Water rationing was introduced in this part of North Island recently and there were fears that supplies would run out before long in some areas. There was reason for rejoicing then both in the country at large and in the cricket team in particular when swathes of rain swept across the Basin Reserve ground. New Zealand were on 162 for two in their second innings after following on, still 49 behind England, when the only sensible option was taken. Alastair Cook, the England captain, could rue a missed opportunity as their opponents did in the first match when a wash out on the first day rather than the last always made improbable any result other than a draw. Cook said: "We got ourselves in a position to win the game. We can take a lot from that after our first performance. Clearly, I don't think we really wanted to enforce the follow-on when you've bowled 90 overs on a good wicket and put the effort in - with four bowlers - that the lads had. But the circumstance with the weather - we knew it was pretty accurate, when it's so close - we thought we'd have 80 overs to bowl them out. That was a chance to win the game, and our only chance really. We asked a lot of the bowlers to do that, and unfortunately didn't quite create enough chances. As it happened, England had 68 overs and if they failed to create enough they also played a fairly conservative brand of cricket. New Zealand resisted tenaciously but Cook chose not to chase wickets with all-out attacking fields and bowling. England continued to rely on a policy of patience. There were, as Cook said, some good things to come out of the match following the epic rearguard action in Dunedin when they batted 170 overs, and needed to, albeit on a flat wicket, to save the match after some disastrous batting in their first innings. Cook said: "We've got a series to win. We came here to try to do it, and if we manage to we'll have had a really good winter. Both sides will just want to play five days in a one-off match - and the best side will win. New Zealand lost a lot of time in that first game, when they were ahead, and we've lost a lot of time in this one. So I suppose it's fair in one way. The continuing good form of Nick Compton who scored his second hundred in consecutive innings and the renaissance of Stuart Broad who took 6 for 51 to halt a miserable winter were particularly heartening for England. Cook is convinced that though the pitches for both the first and second Tests were docile they would still have produced positive results had the weather not intervened. Brendon McCullum, the New Zealand captain, firmly resisted the notion that there was a plot afoot to build tame pitches to make the home side's job easier. Before the series began it was widely supposed, given the sides" recent form and their position in the world rankings, that England would win at a canter, "If you've seen the way we've played the last two Tests we've played reasonably proactively," said McCullum. We go into every game trying to win it, it's not about hanging on for a draw. We see it as a great opportunity to clinch a series win against England which is something we'd all hold very fondly. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but I don't agree with it. Both sides will be trying their socks off to break the stalemate on the drop-in pitch at Eden Park.