Australia close in on No.1 ranking

If Australia is to secure the title of world’s best Test team they will be forced to cool their heels, as well as their fraying frustrations after New Zealand’s stubborn batting pushed the deciding Test into the fifth day.

Knowing that a win or a draw will land them the ICC’s top Test ranking and the associated booty that comes with the crown, Australia return to Christchurch's Hagley Oval tomorrow morning needing 131 runs to formalise the former.

Or batting through the minimum of 90 overs without surrendering their final nine wickets to secure the latter, an unimaginable scenario given a warm and sunny day is expected to shine down on the benign pitch in the Garden City.

When today began with four of NZ's top five batsmen finished for the Test and the remaining seven needing to find 14 runs to force Australia into the second innings they didn't need in Wellington, the tourists were eyeing a win with a day to spare.

As was the case at the Basin Reserve a week ago.

But not only did the Black Caps find sufficient stickability with the bat to set Australia a target, which eventually grew to a meaningful target of 201, they frustrated a couple of their rivals beyond boiling point in the process.

Having toiled hard to create opportunities, only to see the few that arose squandered, the Australian bowlers got to within an over of the lunch break before they felt they had finally claimed their man.

That man being New Zealand’s best batter, Kane Williamson, who was the most prominent obstruction between Australia and the early finish they had worked hard to set up after having the game snatched violently from them on day one.

Williamson had done a job on Sri Lanka in a Test at Wellington a year earlier, batting for more than 10 hours to score 242 in the game’s third innings to summon a win from a bleak situation against Sri Lanka.

Quick single: Third umpire at centre of DRS controversy

And if the Australians needed an additional reminder of how dangerous a player Williamson could be with the game still in the balance, it came from the ever-present ground announcer midway through the morning session.

When the sizeable crowd, still bravely hopeful of a home town result in Brendon McCullum’s final Test, were told that not only had the 25-year-old skipper-in-waiting become just the eighth NZ batsmen to reach 4,000 Test runs, he had done it in four fewer innings than the previous fastest.

Martin Crowe, until now considered the finest batsman the Black Caps have fielded.

So when NZ’s best hope of saving, maybe even securing the Test was pinned on the crease by a late in-swinging yorker from Josh Hazlewood in the over before lunch, but was deemed not out by on-field umpire Ranmore Martinesz the Australians promptly took their appeal to a higher authority.

And when that was overruled by third umpire Richard Illingworth on the grounds that Williamson had squeezed the ball into his pad via the toe of his bat, they tried to push it further through force of will.

Even though the hot-spot technology distinctly showed a tell-tale glow at the base of Williamson’s bat, and sufficient reason to scuttle the review at first opportunity.

The fact Illingworth’s verdict, as relayed to the players and the public on the giant video screen on Hagley’s grass banks, was reached quite early in the review process and was at odds with the Australians’ reading that Williamson had not hit the ball became the catalyst for an unpleasant exchange.

Quick single: Williamson sets new Kiwi record

Whether Hazlewood and Steve Smith, who had collected the ball on the bounce as it rebounded to slip before calling for the review of umpire Martinesz’s decision, interpreted the infra-red footage as being bat on pad or bat scraping ground is unclear.

What is not up for debate, because the stump microphones were carrying conversations live and direct to a global viewing audience in contravention of the agreed policy regarding broadcasters’ responsibilities surrounding on-field chatter, is who was the target of that anger.

Hazlewood and his captain made a bee-line for Martinesz in his guise as the on-field representative of the umpiring fraternity that the Australians clearly believed had made a blue, and directed their displeasure at him in words of a similar hue.

The unedifying spat was revisited at overs end as the teams and the officials headed to lunch, with the object of the Australians’ disquiet becoming Corey Anderson who had lived something of a fraught existence over the preceding few hours to be 35no.

Utterly unperturbed by the whole commotion, in keeping with a character as unflappable as his batting style, was Williamson who went to the break on 89.

But in the space of a few over after the adjournment, the game swung sharply back in Australia’s favour and the incident became a sore point more than a talking point when Jackson Bird took the ball and changed the game.

With the old one he coaxed Anderson into another unnecessary flay with feet-planted, only this time fortune had turned and the all-rounder found his middle stump tilted back.

In his next over, with the new one in his hand, Bird achieved the same result against Williamson who was undone by the extra movement off the hard, raised seam and played on for 97.

Quick single: Finch ready to fight for opener's berth

And three balls later he completed a forgettable Test for Tim Southee who went wicketless in Australia’s first innings and then run-less in NZ’s second to reduce them to 7-210, a lead of just 75 and a clutch of tailender on whom to rely.

That’s when the frustration returned for Smith and his team, B J Watling and Matt Henry flaunting the lack of bowler assistance in a pitch that was pre-ordered by the Black Caps to favour seamers by swinging happily to an eighth-wicket stand of 118.

In which Henry, who like Southee has bowled without menace but proved a contrastingly dab hand with the bat, notched his maiden Test half-century.

The frolic continued through until tea, by which time it was clear the Test would push into day five with the odds still stacked heavily in Australia’s favour.

Even though the Black Caps lead had extended to 200 by the time Bird cleaned up the final wickets to finish the day with career-best Test figures of 5-59, a deserved reward after a trying return to Test cricket in his previous outings on NZ soil.

The loss of Warner for his third score below 25 in this series gave the Black Caps brief hope that the 201 chase might be more challenging than it outwardly appeared.

But the tourists resume tomorrow after a night’s sleep that has hopefully settled anxieties and tempers, in the knowledge that a further 131 runs will see them on top of the world.