Boult savours his day to remember

"You're worse than England," the majority of the 40,053 crowd at Eden Park sang.

It was an extraordinary atmosphere. The ground is famous as an intimidating arena for rugby, but this was the Australian cricket team being barracked from bleachers.

With the score reading a barely believable 104 for 9, they were not far wrong, either. In the end, a final-wicket stand of 45 hauled them to the dizzy heights of 152. And dizzy it certainly appeared, as New Zealand tried to close out the chase against Mitchell Starc's vicious inswingers. The singing had stopped.

Walking in was Trent Boult. A few hours earlier, he had been acclaimed by the masses following a spell of 5-3-3-5 to embarrass Australia's middle order, but now he was required to face up to their own lethal left-armer.

"I was pretty wound up, that's for sure," Boult said of the walk to the crease. "I got out there and Kane [Williamson] was saying I was going about a million miles an hour, so he quickly slow it down and simplified it for me."

He did his job, a block and a leave alone. Rarely have two such defensive shots been greeted with such a noise in one-day cricket. Then came Williamson's six. "I was pretty ecstatic," Boult said. "I can't really remember what Kane was like. I was pretty pumped and will remember a lot of this day for a while."

So for the second time in day, Boult was walking off the ground as the crowd stood to their feet. "It was unbelievable to be honest, to have a crowd like that chanting away right behind us was something pretty special. When the wickets fell you couldn't really hear yourself think. It was an amazing atmosphere."

It is now one match-winning performance apiece for New Zealand's new-ball quicks after Tim Southee's demolition of England in Wellington. Boult's first spell had been wicketless but impressively tight as Australia tried to muscle New Zealand out of the match early on. Then, in one over, he found the inside edges of both Glenn Maxwell and Mitchell Marsh with unerring similarity.

"I've just tried to do what I've been doing in last five or six months, pitch the ball up and try to swing it," he said. "I got a bit of luck with a couple of drag-ons but it was obviously all go and something I'll remember for a while."

This was his first one-day international involving Australia, who he made his Test debut against in Hobart in a seven-run victory, and was the most emphatic example yet of him transferring his red-ball skills into the white-ball game. He now has 10 wickets at 14.40 in the World Cup and since the start of this year, his one-day average has come down by 17 runs.

"The most satisfaction comes from doing it against the best players in the world," Boult said. "We sat in our hotel a few days ago scouting through their batsmen and we knew how much depth they had. So to put the game plans into place is very satisfying and pretty cool."