A lesson in perseverance

Tea break on the third day. Chris Martin had just nicked out Yuvraj Singh. Both teams went off McLean Park to rest, but two men stayed out, bowling to one of the assistant coaches who wore a baseball glove. Martin and James Franklin had smelled blood, and they didn't want to let their meal cool down in the shade. It was just one part of the lesson that the No. 8 Test team in the world handed out to the one aspiring to be No. 1 - a lesson on how to bowl and field on flat pitches.

With 619 on the board for New Zealand, the third day was going to be one where the pitch would be taken out of the equation. It was going to be a day decided by mental and physical battles.

The pitch was the same batting beauty as on the first two days, but India needed to play with a free mind, not under the pressure of the New Zealand score. The hosts knew there would be partnerships, given the quality of the Indian batting line-up and the pitch, but they would need to be smart, with the ball and in the field, and not relent.

In the mind and in the body, New Zealand were fresher than their opponents. While India seemed to have made their minds up that this match would be a draw as early as on the first day, New Zealand persisted even during India's batting onslaughts. They didn't attack unwisely, though. The field placements were not too different from those used by India. Daniel Vettori started the day with a sweeper-cover, and employed one almost throughout. But the fielders were alert and ready to help out the bowlers when they needed them the most.

When Sachin Tendulkar took apart Jeetan Patel for 14 in one over, the offspinner was not taken out of the attack. He bowled a smart drifter first ball next over, and got his reward. Before that the fast bowlers had busted their gut, keeping Rahul Dravid on the defensive with short-pitch balls that pinned him to the crease.

"[It was] just a tough grind," Martin said later. "The results showed the discipline that we bowled with today. Sachin and dravid were batting really well at the start of the day. So we had to keep plugging away at them during those phases of the game."

For two hours or so after Tendulkar fell, Dravid and VVS Laxman looked inseparable. The legend seemed to be repeating itself; the second-most prolific fifth-wicket pair in Tests was churning out the runs again.

It would have been tempting for the bowlers to give up then. No one would have complained, for Dravid and Laxman have brought the best attacks down to their knees. But the bowlers stuck to their disciplines in the middle session. Some of the wristy shots that Laxman played today can be demoralising, but the bowlers just kept bowling to their fields. The first 25 overs of the middle session cost only 55. Vettori even bowled one over with the wicketkeeper standing down the leg side. The deficit, despite close to two-thirds of a day of good batting, still read 373.

Test cricket is as much about persisting for long periods as it is about seizing the precise moment. Jesse Ryder, in his first over, provided New Zealand with that moment, drawing a false shot from Dravid, and Vettori seized it. Twelve balls had to be bowled with the old ball, and Vettori couldn't have been more eager to take the new ball once it became due.

Martin charged in, the most aggressive he has looked all series, sensing that a tentative Yuvraj Singh was there for the taking. And then Yuvraj edged. The difference between the two teams over the last three days became most apparent: when Zaheer Khan had created an opportunity soon after Ross Taylor's wicket, Yuvraj dropped James Franklin. New Zealand held on to every opportunity after that, and India gave them plenty. In the end, eight wickets in a day was more than what New Zealand had expected when the day began, but they fully deserved those rewards. "It's quite difficult to picture getting eight wickets on that pitch in a day," Martin said. "For us to actually end up with that result is something we weren't expecting at the start of the day."

India received criticism over the last two days for employing defensive fields too early but New Zealand's fields weren't too different. They even bowled restrictive lines at times. Their aggression lay within. They seemed to know when to raise the intensity. No doubt they were helped by a mountain of runs that they could lean against.

Zaheer had said yesterday that the Indian bowlers had done the best they could. If he had watched New Zealand operate in the field today, he would have seen a lesson or two for India's attack, especially when nothing was going their way.