Blackcaps inability to adapt to the conditions cost them - Kane Williamson

Blackcaps captain Kane Williamson has lamented how long it took his team to adapt to the soggy Seddon Park surface in their narrow loss to South Africa in the first one-day-international.

The home side struggled to get going at the crease after losing the toss and being sent in by the Proteas, falling to 108-5 with Dean Brownlie and Williamson himself the only batsmen in the top five to reach double figures.

"It's pretty disappointing," Williamson said in the post-match press conference.

"It's one of those games because it was such a fine line, you look at a number of little things and say shoulda coulda but at the day of the day, I thought the guys fought really hard."

Staring down the barrel of a sub-200 score, some late hitting by Tim Southee and Colin de Grandhomme gave the Blackcaps something to bowl at.

And Williamson said had it not been for the world-class quality of AB de Villiers, it would have been enough.

"With the bat it was far from perfect but we did manage to get to a total which I thought could have been really difficult to chase down.

"It proved to do so and it took someone of the calibre of AB de Villiers to skulk the way to the end."

Despite conceding an 88-run opening partnership, bowlers Southee, Ish Sodhi and Mitch Santner brought the Blackcaps back into the match. But the 26-year-old said they were outplayed when it mattered most.

"It wasn't an easy surface, we do want to adapt far more quickly than that and I think South Africa did do that.

"They had a great platform at the start but the middle and lower order partnerships they were able to do on that surface was impressive."

Both sides will now head to Christchurch for the second ODI on Wednesday.

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