Cricket: Black Caps gear up for dominant win over West Indies

The advantage of having a full-tempo bowling attack is that it has a relentless, monster-like quality when at the top.

The downside is that it can leave you exposed, especially if conditions change during the match.

At Seddon Park, there has been a 95 percent rise, with just one unbroken position in the seventh wicket of 107 between Jermaine Blackwood (80) and Alzarri Joseph (59) preventing a three-day inning win.

By firing the West Indies for 138 and having them cling to life at 196-6 on a day of spectacular carnage, the players backed the decision to go to the test without a specialized spinner. As it was, they hardly needed an all-rounder, as Daryl Mitchell wasn’t called on the ball until the 20th of the second dig with the Windies five down.

Like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the wonderfully balanced attack sparked war, famine, and pestilence in a higher order from the West Indies that seemed to have neither the skills nor, more worryingly, the stomach for a fight.

The combination of swing, raised stitching, precision, and aggression was just too good.

(Here’s the space where you tend to see a line above the attack that is brilliantly backed up the field, but in this case it wouldn’t be true. There were at least four missed catches during the day and Mitchell Santner couldn’t get under a skier towards the end of the first inning.)

Tim Southee led the way in the early innings with 4-35 of 19 overs, mostly excellent. However, you can’t blame any of them. Throwing a length longer than most are used to seeing, Neil Wagner scooped up two pounds, Trent Boult caught Kraigg Brathwaite’s key wicket trapped behind and Jamieson attracted attention with two balls that disturbed the castle.

The first of these, for Darren Bravo, was how they were drawn in their sleep: having the batter come forward and play slightly off the line while the ball swayed between the bat and the pad.

Enforcing the follow-up was not a difficult decision given the modest workloads and Boult made sure the buyer had no regrets by eliminating John Campbell in the second over, caught in a slip by Tom Latham. The starter has had better days, going out twice on eight balls for six runs.

Enter Bravo, who has been in this position before: At Dunedin in 2013 he hit the first knockdown with his side following and dropped 218 runs later. He and the rain saved the West Indies in that test, not so here where he got caught in the Southee slips off Wagner by a skittish 12.

If Campbell had a bad day, think of Shamarh Brooks. Forced to hold the wicket due to Shane Dowrich’s injury, Brooks would have woken up stiff and in pain. You can add a lot of grumpiness to your problems after following a first inning with a seven-ball with two of four.

He should, for his own sake, avoid all repetitions of the shot that saw him caught by assistant principal Devon Conway in front of Wagner.

After finishing the second day at 49-0, there was a real prospect of digging for New Zealand to work really hard on the grounds. In that context, part of the shot selection defied logic.

Campbell launched a horrible overhead push to start the first-inning procession, while his opening partner Brathwaite, normally a roundhead among the knights, was in the second trying to get Southee up and over the slips.

Good fast bowling stirs the brain first, then the feet and hands.

Blackwood and Joseph headed for an unlikely rear, but they were lucky and gave the West Indies something to hold onto.

Joseph waddled in the early innings and reached the fold with a test high of 24. By the end of the day, he had frustrated the New Zealanders enough to be given the honor of a crafty word or three.

Blackwood has a reputation for being a heartthrob. Reliability or consistency has never been a strong point, but with an unfinished double of 23 and 80, it looks like the rock of all ages.