Preview: New Zealand and England are set for an exciting showdown at Auckland in the fifth and final T20I with the series, which has swung either way so far, currently level at 2-2.

England had earlier thrashed the Black Caps by 76 runs in the fourth game of the five-match series, hosted at Napier's McLean Park on Friday with Dawid Malan smashing his first Twenty20 century from 48 balls in a record 182-run partnership with Eoin Morgan.

Malan's unbeaten century was the fastest by an England batsman in a T20 international, beating by 12 balls Alex Hales' record of 60 deliveries and lifting England to 241-3, its highest score in the 20-over format.

New Zealand, never in the match, was dismissed for 165 in the 17th over.

Malan said Morgan launched the England batting attack "and I sort of jumped in his slipstream and tagged along a little bit.

"I got to about 80 and I thought these boundaries are so small I may as well have a crack. (Morgan) played fantastically well. The intent he showed from ball one took the pressure off me especially early on in my innings."

The visitors grabbed the 1-0 series lead with a seven-wicket win at Christchurch, before the Kiwis fought back in the next two games, winning by 21 and 14 runs respectively to go 2-1 up.

The T20Is will be followed by a two-Test series, which incidentally is not part of the ongoing ICC World Test Championship, following which the Black Caps fly to Australia while the Englishmen fly across the Indian Ocean to South Africa.

With inputs from AP