His side's 96-run loss to Sri Lanka sucked the majority of the personal pleasure out of captain Daniel Vettori's magnificent century but added further weight to calls for his move up the batting order.
Vettori's gritty 140, his fourth Test ton, exhibited the type of fighting spirit that his team required to chase down a daunting target of 494 and achieve a notable 1-all series result on the sub-continent.
However, he lacked sufficient support as the tourists were dismissed for 397.
Four of the top seven passed 25 but only two reached a half-century – and even then Daniel Flynn (50) and Jacob Oram (56) could not push on any further.
It was left to Vettori at No.8 to show his batsmen the mental application required to turn starts into meaningful contributions, but he was ultimately left feeling flat as his captain's knock ended up in vain.
"It definitely takes most of it out because you want to celebrate a performance that leads to a win," Vettori admitted.
"But you still take satisfaction from your performance – you should still have pride in what you do. I'm happy with how I performed but that's tainted with the loss."
New Zealand was given no chance of chasing down the target on a wearing Colombo fifth-day pitch but with Vettori and Oram's seventh-wicket stand of 124 moving the score to 300-6, a boilover was a real possibility.
However, Oram meekly surrendered his wicket to part-time off-spinner Tillakaratne Dilshan on the stroke of lunch and Vettori was left too much to do with the tail.
"If we hadn't have lost Jacob just before lunch then it could've been a very interesting next couple of sessions," he said.
"I certainly think we would've put a lot of pressure on them, especially as Muralitharan was injured and wasn't able to bowl at 100 percent.
"We felt comfortable facing the other bowlers so if we kept batting and batting and showing the patience then our natural aggression would've got us up with the scoring rate.
"Funny things happen when you put another team under pressure but unfortunately to lose that wicket then probably took the impetus away from our fightback."
Vettori finished easily his side's highest run-scorer in the two-Test series with 272 at 68 – 113 ahead of the next best in Ross Taylor.
However, the skipper poured cold water on any thoughts of moving up as far as No.6 for the home series against Pakistan later in the year.
"It's a tough one because Jacob Oram bats ahead of me and he has five Test match hundreds and he averages 36 with the bat, so that's a proven record and we think Brendon McCullum is a really good player.
"If I went up it would only put those guys further down. It's a difficult one plus I've got the burden of bowling a lot of overs and captaining the team.
"I'm sure it'll be a question asked over the next little while but I'm comfortable where I'm at and it's working, so why change it?"
He instead hoped New Zealand's top-order would learn from watching Sri Lanka's batsmen for hours on end as they showed the right application to succeed in the Test arena.
"We've been given great examples in this series of how to do that with Jayawardene, Samaraweera and Sangakkara.
"You just bat and bat and bat and make the bowlers come to you and probably at times we've been a bit guilty of being too aggressive trying to take the game to the bowlers but when you've got bowlers with the class of Muralitharan and the rest of the Sri Lankan team you've got to wait and wait and wait."
Vettori also gave his backing to giving the same players the chance to redeem themselves against Pakistan, despite coach and fellow selector Andy Moles saying the previous evening that some serious discussions would be held before then.
"I think the big thing for me is consistency because we don't have people knocking down the door trying to make the team.
"You take notice of people's performances in the A games and there's probably two domestic games before the first Test match against Pakistan but I would like to back these guys and think they can turn around some performances."