This Test match turned not at sunset as per the theory of day-night cricket, but in the rare instant when a batsman who had walked was given not out. In no other game does the flap of a butterfly wing become an earthquake as it sometimes does in cricket.
In other game are so many different humours possible in the one contest. This day divided not so much into sessions as movements, like a symphony.
But this day also, a shadow came across pink-ball cricket. A quick game is a good game, but a very quick game is a worry. Supposedly in pink-ball cricket, you must make your hay while the sun shines. But in this match, except for one crowded hour at the end of Australia's first innings, both teams have laboured with the bat, day, dusk and night.
Whether Test cricketers have not yet adapted to conditions, or conditions are not sufficiently adapted to Test cricket, will become clear only in the post-mortems. They will be convened soon enough. Amid the opening night rave reviews, the appreciations of the players were sketchy and notably qualified. Thirteen wickets fell on Saturday after 12 on day one.
Australia surrendered six in the first session, all in broad and brilliant daylight. Don't blame the pink ball; it stood out as if fluorescent. Not for the first time this year, Australia's batting was peeled open by skilful swing and seam bowling. Less predictably, it also succumbed against finger-spin that was at best earnest.
New Zealand's attack was every bit as concerted as Australia's on Friday. Captain Brendon McCullum added a moment of inspiration, making something of nothing to run out Shaun Marsh, though it must be said that Marsh by his indecision made nothing out of something. He is an ill-starred Test cricketer.
Only captain Steve Smith demonstrated the necessary wherewithal. His least appreciated virtue is his stoicism. Sometimes in Test cricket, the most important – and difficult – thing to do is nothing. So girded in mind, Smith took almost three hours to make a half-century, but at that point, he appeared to have outlasted the New Zealanders.
Mark Craig's off-spinners in this series have been as threatening as puree, so it was probably the change rather than the bowler that lulled Smith, who suddenly was caught behind. When Josh Hazlewood fell to the last ball before lunch, Australia were 8-116.
Two overs and two runs after the break, Nathan Lyon swished at Mitchell Santner, the ball was taken at slip and when umpire S Ravi ruled not out, McCullum ordered a review. High farce ensued. The technological review, shown on the scoreboard screen, appeared to show the merest of contact with the bat, but contact nonetheless. Seeing this, Lyon made for the pavilion; the interim report was enough for him.
But after an inordinately long time, third umpire Nigel Llong ruled with more legal finesse than cricket intuition that although there was some evidence that Lyon was out, there not enough for him to overturn the not-out decision. It was the beyond-reasonable-doubt principle. It was cricket protocol at its most obtuse.
And it changed the match. Already, Peter Nevill was beginning to fashion a wicketkeeper's typical obdurate spoke-the-works innings. Now the pardoned Lyon batted like a man who could not get out, riding his luck, making more for himself; he became Test cricket's first compulsive sweeper. When he was done, Mitch Starc hobbled to the wicket and hit out with even greater impudence. Not for the first time in Test history, Nos. 10 and 11 batted with all the blitheness of men who refuse to recognise the bowlers' powers or their own limitations.
Suddenly, the travail of the previous session melted away. Boundaries were distributed like Father Christmas' lollies. Starc went at Craig's bowling as if on a driving range. The Kiwis lost their bearings and their sangfroid. Not until Trent Boult fired a couple of yorkers at Starc's prosthetically encased foot was the momentum checked. Who did Boult think he was? Starc?
All told, Australia's last two wickets all but doubled the score, raising 108 at roughly three times the going scoring rate.
Chapter three began in the gloaming, in all senses the twilight zone. For cricketers, there is seeing, and seeing. At the pace of Test cricket, batsmen need to see not just a sphere, but its topography. Fieldsmen, too, need cues. As the besieged Kiwis imploded, it was clear that not much was clear, for batsmen or fieldsmen.
Wickets and catches went down apace.
But Hazlewood filled Starc's boots, and then his own, and the other bowlers, applying the simple line, length and occasional temptation, thrived, too. After Brisbane and Perth, it was only their due.
