Australia v New Zealand: The Trans-Tasman Cricket Rivalry

Australia and New Zealand cricket is the closest thing either country has to a neighbourhood fixture, and it is played far less often than that description suggests. The two sides have met in 62 Tests since 1946, of which Australia have won 36 and New Zealand 8, with 18 drawn. In one-day internationals Australia have won roughly two-thirds of about 142 meetings. There are two trophies at stake — the Trans-Tasman Trophy in Tests since 1985-86, and the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy in white-ball cricket since 2004-05 — and Australia have held both for most of their existence.

That imbalance is the first thing to understand about Australia versus New Zealand cricket, and the second is that it does not describe the experience of watching it. The rivalry produces an unusual number of one-wicket finishes, last-over chases and matches that turn on a single decision, and it carries a grievance history no other Australian fixture can match. The 1981 underarm ball is only the most famous item in it.

This guide covers the whole contest from the Australian side: how the fixture came into being after a forty-three-year gap, what the two trophies are and how they work, the series that actually mattered, why Australia usually wins, what changes when Australian teams cross the Tasman, and how to follow it as a supporter here.

The head-to-head, format by format

The numbers below are the honest starting point. Through the 2024 Test series in New Zealand, Australia led the Test record 36 wins to 8 across 62 matches, with 18 draws. In one-day internationals the figure most recently published had Australia on around 96 wins from about 142 completed and abandoned matches, New Zealand on 39, with seven producing no result. In Twenty20 internationals Australia led 13 to 6 from 19 matches to the start of 2024, and won two more in the three-match series at Bay Oval in October 2025.

• Australia wins
• New Zealand wins

Tests368

ODIs9639

T20Is136

Test figures are through the 2024 series. ODI and T20I figures are the most recently published totals and exclude matches with no result, so the bars do not sum to matches played.

Show the numbers

Australia v New Zealand head-to-head by format

Item	Australia wins	New Zealand wins
Tests	36	8
ODIs	96	39
T20Is	13	6

Forty-three years without a Test

The fixture is old only in the sense that the first meeting was a long time ago. In practice the two countries barely played each other for most of the twentieth century.

Australia and New Zealand met once in a Test in March 1946, at the Basin Reserve in Wellington. New Zealand were dismissed for 42 and 54 and lost inside two days. The match was not even accepted as a Test at the time and was granted the status retrospectively in 1948. Whatever the paperwork said, the cricket said something blunter, and the Australian board drew the obvious conclusion.

The consequence was a gap that ran until the 1973-74 season. Australia did not play a Test against New Zealand for twenty-eight years after Wellington, and had not played one before it since 1929 outside that single match. The stated reasons involved player payments and the New Zealand board's capacity to meet them. The unstated reason was that Australia did not think New Zealand were worth the fixture.

That is the foundation the rivalry was built on, and it explains a great deal about how New Zealand cricket regards Australia even now. This was not two neighbours who grew up competing. It was one country ignoring another for four decades and then being made to pay attention.

1974: New Zealand finally win one

Tests resumed in 1973-74 with New Zealand touring Australia and then Australia touring New Zealand in the same season. In the second Test of the return leg, at Lancaster Park in Christchurch in March 1974, New Zealand beat Australia by five wickets. It was their first win over Australia in a Test and their first Test win of any kind since 1969. Glenn Turner made a hundred in each innings.

Australia squared the series with a 297-run win at Eden Park, and the series finished 1-1. But the result at Christchurch removed the assumption that had justified the previous four decades. New Zealand could beat Australia, at least at home.

1981 and the poisoning of the fixture

Seven years later the fixture acquired its permanent scar. In the third final of the 1980-81 World Series Cup at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, with New Zealand needing six from the last ball to tie, Greg Chappell instructed his brother Trevor to bowl it along the ground. It was legal, it was universally condemned in both countries, and underarm bowling was banned in international cricket within weeks.

The full account of that evening, the law that followed and the long aftermath is set out in the 1981 underarm incident guide. What matters here is its effect on the rivalry. For roughly the next twenty-five years, every close finish between the two sides carried it. New Zealand crowds referenced it, Australian commentators apologised for it, and it gave a fixture with a lopsided scoreboard something the scoreboard could not supply.

1985-86: Hadlee, and the only New Zealand series win in Australia

The high point of New Zealand cricket in Australia came in November 1985. In the first Test of the series at the Gabba, Richard Hadlee took 9 for 52 in Australia's first innings, then 6 for 71 in the second, for match figures of 15 for 123. Australia were bowled out for 179. New Zealand replied with 553, built on centuries from Martin Crowe and John Reid and a half-century from Hadlee himself, and won by an innings and 41 runs.

Australia won at the Sydney Cricket Ground, New Zealand won at the WACA, and the series finished 2-1 to New Zealand. It is still their only series win in Australia, forty years later. Hadlee took 33 wickets in the three matches.

The 9 for 52 remains the best innings return by any bowler in a Test played on Australian soil, by anyone from any country. That is a New Zealand record standing on Australian ground and it has been there since 1985. Later that same season the two sides played a return series in New Zealand and New Zealand won that as well.

The Trans-Tasman Trophy

The trophy that now decides Test series between the two countries was created for that 1985-86 season. Like the Ashes urn, it stays with the holder when a series is drawn, which has kept it in Australian hands for long stretches.

New Zealand held it from the moment of its creation through both 1985-86 series. Australia took it in 1987-88, lost it in New Zealand in 1989-90, and New Zealand retained it with a drawn series in 1992-93. Australia won it back in 1993-94 and, apart from that, have held it ever since — including through four drawn series that changed nothing.

The table below picks out the series that moved the trophy or ended in a whitewash. Several others were drawn without changing the holder, which is why the gaps in the seasons column are larger than the gaps in the fixture list.

Season	Host	Tests	Result	Holder after
1985-86	Australia	3	New Zealand won	New Zealand
1985-86	New Zealand	3	New Zealand won	New Zealand
1987-88	Australia	3	Australia won	Australia
1989-90	New Zealand	1	New Zealand won	New Zealand
1992-93	New Zealand	3	Drawn	New Zealand
1993-94	Australia	3	Australia won	Australia
1999-2000	New Zealand	3	Australia won 3-0	Australia
2004-05	New Zealand	3	Australia won	Australia
2015-16	Australia	3	Australia won	Australia
2019-20	Australia	3	Australia won 3-0	Australia
2023-24	New Zealand	2	Australia won 2-0	Australia

Under the trophy alone, the record is Australia 28 Test wins, New Zealand 6, and 13 draws from 47 matches. The most recent series, in February and March 2024, went to Australia 2-0, with wins at the Basin Reserve by 172 runs and at Hagley Oval by three wickets.

• Australia wins59.6%
• Draws27.7%
• New Zealand wins12.8%

Results of the 47 Tests played for the Trans-Tasman Trophy through the 2023-24 series. Series outcomes are counted separately and are not shown here.

Show the numbers

Trans-Tasman Trophy Tests since 1985-86

Item	Value
Australia wins	28
Draws	13
New Zealand wins	6

The long Australian ownership, 1993 onwards

From the mid-1990s the Test rivalry stopped being a contest and became a fixture. Australia's side of that period — the one built around Warne, McGrath, the Waughs, Gilchrist, Hayden and Ponting — was the strongest in the world by a distance, and New Zealand caught it at full strength.

The 1999-2000 series in New Zealand finished 3-0 to Australia, a clean sweep away from home against a side playing in its own conditions. Australia won both legs of the double series in 2004-05, three Tests in New Zealand and two at home. The 2001-02 series in Australia was drawn, and drawn series kept the trophy where it already was.

New Zealand's problem across that stretch was not the top of their order or the top of their attack. It was that a two or three-Test series gives a smaller side no time to absorb a bad session. Lose the first morning of a two-Test series in Australia and the trophy is effectively gone by the fourth day of the tour. The scheduling and the imbalance reinforce each other, which is one of the reasons New Zealand's administrators have argued for longer series for decades and one of the reasons they have not got them.

The two most recent completed Test series follow the same shape. In 2019-20 Australia won 3-0 at home, including a day-night Test at Optus Stadium in Perth. In 2023-24 Australia won 2-0 in New Zealand, taking the first at the Basin Reserve by 172 runs with Cameron Green named player of the match, and the second at Hagley Oval by three wickets after a genuinely tight finish in which Alex Carey batted Australia home.

What the two trophies actually decide

It is worth being precise about what is at stake, because the two trophies work differently and the difference matters.

The Trans-Tasman Trophy behaves like the Ashes urn. It sits with the holder and only moves when the other side wins a series outright. A drawn series changes nothing. That rule has been enormously favourable to Australia, who have been the holder going into most series since 1993 and have needed only to avoid losing.

The Chappell-Hadlee Trophy works the opposite way in one respect: it has generally been contested afresh each time, so the previous result carries no advantage. That is why it has changed hands more often, including twice inside three months in 2016-17. Since 2024 it has covered both white-ball formats on a combined basis, an arrangement designed to stop the trophy swapping owners between a Sunday one-day international and the Twenty20 international three days later.

Neither trophy has any bearing on the World Test Championship or on tournament qualification. They are bilateral prizes, and their value is entirely a matter of what the two countries decide they are worth — which, on the New Zealand side, has always been considerably more than on the Australian one.

The Chappell-Hadlee Trophy

The white-ball trophy arrived in 2004-05, named for two families rather than two players: the Chappell brothers, Ian, Greg and Trevor, and the Hadlees, Walter and his sons Barry, Dayle and Richard. Given that two of the six men named on it were directly responsible for the 1981 incident, the choice of name is either an act of reconciliation or an act of nerve, depending on which side of the Tasman you ask.

It began as a one-day series trophy and was contested most seasons through the 2000s and 2010s, including one-match versions decided by World Cup group games in 2011 and 2015. In February 2024 the arrangement changed: the trophy became a white-ball prize decided across both one-day and Twenty20 internationals on a combined points basis, so that it cannot swap hands twice inside a fortnight when both formats are played on the same tour.

Australia have won it far more often than New Zealand — nine to four on the published count as of October 2025 — and held it after winning the three-match Twenty20 series at Bay Oval 2-0 in October 2025, Mitchell Marsh making his first Twenty20 international century in the decider.

New Zealand's best runs with it came in 2006-07, when they won 3-0 at home, and in the two 2016-17 series, when they won at home 2-0 after losing 3-0 in Australia three months earlier. That pattern — Australia win in Australia, New Zealand win in New Zealand — is the closest thing the white-ball rivalry has to a rule.

2015: the year the rivalry mattered most

The World Cup of 2015 was jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand, and the two sides met twice: once in the pool stage at Eden Park and once in the final at the MCG. Between them those two matches contain everything the rivalry does well and everything it does not.

Eden Park, 28 February 2015

Australia were bowled out for 151, Trent Boult taking 5 for 27 on a green surface with a full house at a ground where the straight boundaries are absurdly short. New Zealand looked to be walking it at 78 for 1, then Mitchell Starc took 6 for 28 and they collapsed to 146 for 9. Kane Williamson hit Pat Cummins for six to win it by one wicket. It lasted less than a full day's play and is widely rated the best match of the tournament.

The MCG final, 29 March 2015

The final was the opposite in every respect. It was the first World Cup final between two host nations, played in front of a capacity crowd at the MCG on a surface with no assistance in it and boundaries twice the length of Eden Park's. New Zealand were bowled out for 183 with Brendon McCullum gone in the first over, and Australia chased it down for the loss of three wickets to win their fifth men's World Cup.

New Zealand had gone through the tournament unbeaten in their own conditions and had never previously reached a final. The step up to a full-sized Australian ground against Starc, Johnson and Faulkner was the difference, and it is a compressed version of the whole rivalry: New Zealand get there, and then the size of Australian cricket asserts itself.

Dubai 2021: the T20 World Cup final

Six years later the two met again in a global final, this time in the men's Twenty20 World Cup at Dubai on 14 November 2021. New Zealand made 172 for 4. Australia chased it with eight wickets and seven balls to spare and won their first men's Twenty20 world title.

Three global finals between the two countries in eight years, if the 2015 pool match is left out, and Australia have taken the two that mattered. New Zealand's consistency at global tournaments across that period was better than Australia's. Their record in the matches that decided them was not.

Why Australia usually wins

The gap is structural rather than tactical, and it comes down to four things.

Player population is the largest. Australia has roughly five times New Zealand's population and a domestic cricket system with six first-class states, a professional Twenty20 competition in the Big Bash League, and a fully professional women's structure alongside it. New Zealand's first-class competition has six teams drawn from a population smaller than Sydney's.

Money is the second. Cricket Australia's broadcast income is a different order of magnitude, and it funds contracts, coaching, facilities and a pathway that keeps more good players in the game for longer.

Conditions are the third, and they cut in Australia's favour more often than not because Australia hosts more of the fixtures and because Australian batters spend their formative years facing the bounce that Australian pitches produce.

The fourth is depth in fast bowling. Australia has produced an unbroken line of high-quality quicks for fifty years. New Zealand's attacks have generally been built around one exceptional bowler — Hadlee, then Bond, then Boult and Southee — with the supporting cast varying in quality.

• 62Tests played since 1946
• 28Years between the first and second Test
• 1New Zealand series wins in Australia
• 9Chappell-Hadlee titles won by Australia
• 2Global finals contested by both

Structural counts and published records rather than measurements. The Test figures run through the 2024 series and the trophy count is as published in October 2025.

What changes when Australian teams cross the Tasman

Australian sides have historically found New Zealand a harder tour than the head-to-head record suggests, and the reasons are physical.

New Zealand pitches are slower and lower than the fast surfaces at Perth or Brisbane. The Kookaburra ball swings for longer in cooler, damper air, and the seam movement off the pitch lasts well beyond the first hour. Australian batters trained to play off the back foot on true bounce have to come forward more, later, and against a ball that is still moving. That adjustment has undone better Australian batting line-ups than the 1985 one.

Grounds are also smaller. Eden Park in Auckland is a converted rugby ground whose straight boundaries are among the shortest used in international cricket, and it distorts white-ball matches beyond recognition. A total that would be par at the MCG or Optus Stadium is not remotely par at Eden Park, which is why so many Australia-New Zealand white-ball matches there end in a scramble.

Weather is the fourth factor. New Zealand loses more playing time to rain than Australia does, and abandoned or shortened matches have decided more than one series between the two.

Scheduling: why the fixture is thin

The most common complaint about this rivalry, on both sides of the Tasman, is that it barely happens. Sixty-two Tests in eighty years is fewer than one a year, and there have been four and five-year gaps.

The cause is the shape of the international calendar. Australia's home summer is built around a marquee Test series — England or India — plus one shorter visit, and there are only so many weeks between late November and the end of January. New Zealand competes for that second slot with Pakistan, South Africa, the West Indies and Sri Lanka, and it is decided commercially. A two-Test New Zealand series does not sell what a five-Test Ashes sells.

Recent New Zealand visits have often been white-ball tours slotted into the shoulder of the season, played in Cairns, Perth or Hobart rather than at the traditional Test grounds. That is a reasonable use of a short tour and it does spread international cricket beyond the eastern capitals, but it also means the fixture rarely gets the stage that would grow it. The broader picture of how the Australian summer is assembled is covered in the guide to Australian cricket and in the grounds guide.

The women's rivalry

The women's fixture between the two countries is older and even more lopsided. Australia's women have been the dominant force in the international game for most of the last two decades and have beaten New Zealand consistently across all three formats, both bilaterally and at World Cups.

The gap is widening rather than closing, for the same structural reason as the men's: Australia's domestic women's competitions are the most professionalised in the world, and the depth they produce is not something a smaller country can match on funding alone. New Zealand's best players are the equal of anyone. Their eighth, ninth and tenth-best are not, and Twenty20 and one-day cricket punishes that.

Following it as an Australian supporter

When New Zealand tour, tickets are among the easiest of any international series to get. Test matches against New Zealand rarely sell out outside the first two days, one-day internationals are frequently available on the day, and the pricing sits below the Ashes and India tiers. If you want to take someone to their first live international without a ballot and a queue, this is the series to pick.

Broadcast arrangements follow the standard Australian rights deals rather than anything specific to the fixture, and the practical detail is covered in the guide to watching cricket in Australia. Matches in New Zealand start earlier in Australian time than most overseas tours, which makes it one of the few away series watchable at a civilised hour on the east coast.

Where it sits among Australia's rivalries

Australia has three Test rivalries that carry real weight: England, India and, at some distance behind, everyone else. The Ashes has the history and the schedule. The Border-Gavaskar Trophy has, over the last decade, had the better cricket and the bigger crowds. New Zealand sits outside that pair and always has.

What it has instead is proximity, familiarity and a specific piece of unfinished business that neither country has ever fully filed away. Players move between the two systems, New Zealanders make up a large part of several Australian cities, and the tone at the ground is closer to a derby than a Test rivalry. It is also the only fixture on Australia's calendar where the visiting supporters can reasonably claim the moral high ground on a point of history, which is worth something on a long afternoon.

The long institutional story of how Australia came to be the senior partner is set out in the history of Australian cricket, and the current playing group is listed under players. The rest of the sport is collected in the cricket section and the Australia hub.

The players who built their reputations on this fixture

Richard Hadlee is the single most important figure in the rivalry and it is not close. His 1985-86 summer in Australia is the reason New Zealand have a series win here at all, and his 9 for 52 at the Gabba is a record no Australian bowler has managed on an Australian ground in a century and a half of Test cricket.

Around him, Glenn Turner supplied the first win in 1974, Martin Crowe supplied the batting that made the 1985 series a rout rather than an upset, and Stephen Fleming captained the sides that finally started winning white-ball series in Australia. Later, Trent Boult and Tim Southee gave New Zealand a new-ball pair capable of embarrassing Australian top orders in New Zealand conditions, and Kane Williamson supplied the temperament to finish a chase.

On the Australian side the fixture has rarely made reputations, because Australian careers are measured against England and India. The exceptions are Mitchell Starc, whose 6 for 28 at Eden Park in 2015 is one of the great losing spells, and Pat Cummins, who was hit for the winning six in that match as a young bowler and captained Australia to a Test series win in New Zealand nine years later.

What to watch for next

Three things are worth tracking. The first is whether the expanded Chappell-Hadlee format survives, because a combined white-ball trophy decided across two formats is unusual and depends on both boards continuing to schedule both. The second is whether New Zealand ever get a three-Test series in Australia again; the last few have been two, and a two-Test series in Australian conditions gives a visiting side almost no room to recover from a bad first week.

The third is the World Test Championship. Both countries are in it, both have reached the final once, and the cycle guarantees that they will keep playing each other on a fixed rotation even when the commercial case for the fixture is weak. That is, in practice, the strongest thing keeping the oldest scheduling problem in trans-Tasman cricket from returning.