Dylan Cleaver: A very maddening dash of brilliance

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There's a fair bet that even Mystic Meg would not have picked New Zealand to be so far ahead of the eight-ball going into day four - but perhaps we should not act so surprised.

For some time, New Zealand have had this ability to pull an amazing test out of nowhere that makes you a believer again, even for just a moment. It is a maddeningly familiar pattern based, paradoxically, on their utter inconsistency.

You can go right back to the start of John Bracewell's reign where his first home summer in charge was marked by a complete collapse against Pakistan, followed by a draw, a brilliant dismantling, and a poor loss to South Africa.

They have never been able to sustain momentum for long periods of time and they have never been consistently awful enough to lose all hope.

Just look at the past year. Against all odds they thrashed England in the first home test at Hamilton, threw away a first-day upper hand to lose the second test at the basin and capitulated in the third test at Napier.

A couple of months later they earned a draw at Lord's and got themselves into such a dominant position at Old Trafford that the worst they could come away from England with was a highly creditable 1-1 series draw. They lost 0-2.

Their peaks are as perplexing as their troughs are unfathomable.

Take this test, where you would not have got a price on this attack being able to dismiss that line-up with enough credit to enforce the follow-on. But somehow...

The gumption lacking in Hamilton last week has returned in spades in the Bay but they still have a way to go to win the test.

That gumption has been in many respects more important than the noticeable lift in skill level, best demonstrated by the irrepressible Jesse Ryder's double century in the first two days.

Ryder has been the catalyst for New Zealand's playing master to India for the first time since the Twenty20 internationals. Whether it was his 201, an innings that was a heady combination of David Gower's elegance and Adam Gilchrist's power, his partnership-breaking wicket or his behind-the-wicket catching, the 24-year-old has made McLean Park his own over the past three days.

Whether wittingly or, probably, unwittingly, he also played a decent shot to a statement cum question at a press conference. When it was suggested Bangalore had committed daylight robbery in securing his services for the Indian Premier League at US$150,000 ($263,000) he said: "I'll take it."

Very smart that. Cricket has so far seemed recession proof and all power to it on that front. However the rest of society doesn't seem so impervious to the teetering of some of the world's most established financial institutions.

Cashed up cricketers would do well to remember that many of those people who are shelling out their hard-earned cash to follow them are going to be feeling serious pain over the next couple of years. The last thing they want to hear is professional sportsmen complaining about their lot.

Of more immediate concern to the visitors, however, would be the shelving of some of the millionaire shots they went out to in the first innings or they might find the Ford Transit of New Zealand overtakes their Ferrari.

Just which make and model turns up in Wellington is anybody's guess.