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Southee wary heading into tri-series

Black Caps looking to improve against Australia after a home T20 series loss to Pakistan

Pace bowler Tim Southee is paying little heed to Australia's seventh-placed Twenty20 world ranking as the Black Caps prepare for Saturday's opening Gillette T20 INTL tri-series match in Sydney.

He's more concerned that the world No.2 Kiwis rediscover their form quickly after losing their T20 series to Pakistan 2-1 last week in New Zealand.

Defeats in the last two games halted a 13-match winning streak across all formats, and Southee admitted there were lessons to be learned.

"We've played some good cricket throughout the summer, but the last couple of games haven't been our best," he said.

"We'll take what we can out of those games, the areas we can improve on, and look to continue to try and get better."

Australia are coming off a 4-1 ODI series loss to England, and have a relatively inexperienced skipper in David Warner, but Southee doesn't see that favouring New Zealand.

"He's had a bit of experience in the IPL captaining T20 sides - I'm sure he'll be aggressive and I'm sure the Australian way will still come through under David's captaincy."

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Southee admits Warner hasn't been at his best recently, scoring 73 runs in five ODIs against England at an average of 14.60.

But the 29-year-old right-armer has no doubt the stand-in Aussie captain will rediscover his best.

"He's a class player who's shown that over a long period of time - good players don't stay down for too long, and we know we're going to have to be at the top of our game," Southee said.

"We haven't played the Aussies for a while, and we haven't played them a lot in T20 cricket.

"There's a few fresh faces, some young exciting cricketers that have performances over the last few weeks in the Big Bash.

"They've got some dangerous, dangerous players like Chris Lynn, who's obviously taken the shorter formats by storm over the last couple of years.

"But as bowlers, we've got plans that we'll look to use against certain players. You've got to look to back your experience."