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 a couple of hours of play.
Supposedly in pink ball cricket, you must make your hay while the sun shines. But in this match, neither team has. On Friday, New Zealand lost five wickets in the second session. On Saturday, Australia surrendered six in the first, all in brilliant daylight. Don't blame the pink ball; it stood out as iffluorescent. Not for the first time this year, and other recent years, Australia's batting was peeled open by skilful swing and seam bowling. 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, each man at his end fortifying and bidding up the work pf his mate at the other. Captain Brendon McCullum added a moment of inspiration, making something of nothing to run outShaun 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, as if taking perverse pleasure in doing nothing in the face of all the huffing and puffing coming his way. Sometimes in Test cricket, the most important thing to do is nothing. Of course, it wasn't really nothing. Smith played each ball on its carefully considered merit, 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 Mitch Santner's last ball before tea (nee lunch) squirmed under Josh Hazlewood's bat and into his stumps, Australia were 8/116. In the session, dumbstruck Australia had lost 6/62 in 30 overs.
Two overs and two runs after the break, Nathan Lyon swished at 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. Seeing this, Lyon made for the pavilion. But after an inordinately long time, third umpire Nigel Llong ruled with almost legal finesse that although there was some evidence that Lyon was out, there was not enough for him to overturn the not-out decision. It was cricket protocol at his most farcical and obtuse.
And it turned the match. Already, Peter Nevill was beginning to fashion a wicketkeeper's typical obdurate spoke-the-works innings. Now Lyon rode his luck, making more for himself, and 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 their limitations or the bowlers' powers.
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. Nevill might have been Brad Haddin and Starc might have been Mitch Johnson. The Kiwis lost, if not their sangfroid, at least their bearings. A big deficit became a small one, and then a lead. 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?
When Nevill fell to a smart catch by Santner, tumbling forward from the rope at deep point, Australia's last two wickets had all but doubled the score, raising 106 at roughly three times the going scoring rate. Not the least moral to be inferred was about the beauty of low-scoring games, and the way they can instantly change. And this was all before dusk, when the action supposedly begins in day-night cricket.