KEY POINTS:
New Zealand would have lunched well at McLean Park yesterday, having reduced the West Indies' first innings to an extension of the demolition site surrounding half the ground.
But, funny old game and all that, rather than pressing on they had to spend the fat end of the next four hours in a holding pattern as lefthanders Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Brendan Nash, with a mix of resolution and pugnacity, pulled the tourists to 258 for six at stumps.
Chanderpaul will start the day on 100. Even so, New Zealand will fancy their chances of cutting through the West Indian lower order swiftly after picking up two wickets in the last seven overs - Jerome Taylor's first test century at Dunedin notwithstanding.
And New Zealand will figure that today, in golfing parlance, is moving day on a pitch full of runs.
"We're looking to come out firing in the morning," offspinner Jeetan Patel said.
Nash fell at 74 with a loose drive, but Chanderpaul completed his 20th test century, and first against New Zealand, with a perfect demonstration of why - and how - he has been the West Indies rock for the past 14 years.
The pair mounted an impressive rescue operation with their 163-run stand for the fifth wicket, 26 short of the record by Frank Worrell and Clyde Walcott at Auckland 56 years ago.
New Zealand had talked of the need for patience with the ball to work their way through the West Indian batting. With Patel prominent throughout the day, they wheedled away and created the odd chance.
But the spectators had to be patient, too, as the runs dribbled along for much of a hot day.
However, once Chanderpaul and Nash got settled - and particularly in the final session - the tempo lifted significantly.
Chanderpaul, 34, has been West Indies' saviour more times than he would care to remember.
Most likely, he has a default setting in his DNA, so frequently is he their go-to batsman in times of difficulty. There have been many but a phlegmatic approach has served him, and his team, superbly. You wonder how he'd cope if he walked in at 300 for three rather than the more familiar 60 for three.
Nash, born in Australia to Jamaican parents, is playing his second test. His record suggests he's no slouch. He has five first-class centuries for Queensland and - when he switched allegiance a year ago - Jamaica.
Nash drove crisply, cut impressively and worked the ball about efficiently but was left to reflect on an untimely late dismissal.
"It was the wrong time to get out for the team, and I had the chance of a personal milestone," he said last night.
His was the support role to the redoubtable Chanderpaul.
It was appropriate the Guyanese hero got to his century with a workmanlike nurdle to backward square leg for a single. That's his style. His century came off 214 balls with nine fours and three sixes. By stumps he'd batted four and a half hours.
Having won the toss, the West Indies squandered excellent batting conditions in the morning.
Chris Gayle got a beauty from Iain O'Brien with his first delivery of the match, but Ramnaresh Sarwan, Xavier Marshall and Sewnarine Chattergoon - the last two out to smart catches - all at least partly contributed to their dismissals. Once Chanderpaul and Nash got established, they showed what diligence and careful shot selection could produce on a top batting strip.
Although he cleared the boundary three times, and drove solidly, Chanderpaul's game, like New Zealand's bowlers, is about patience, and he outdid New Zealand's best efforts to wear him down.
The consolation for Vettori is that better attacks have foundered on his resilience in the same way down the years. Of the bowlers, he got good value out of O'Brien and Patel was tidy.
