There is a particular kind of Test match that starts ordinary, meanders into the desperate, and ends somewhere between the miraculous and the bloody-minded. This was one of those. Justin Greaves made an incredible 202* on the final day of the Christchurch Test, an innings that began as rescue and ended as refusal, and West Indies - who had been 100 for 2 and then 167 all out in the first innings, who were asked to make 530 or survive two days - drew a Test match that by all logic should have been lost much earlier.

The numbers tell you what happened. Greaves and No.8 Kemar Roach battled undefeated for 409 balls, a 180-run stand of pure defiance, a record for the seventh wicket surpassing the efforts of Sachin Tendulkar and Manoj Prabhakar from 35 years ago. At 163.3 overs, this was the longest fourth innings for the West Indies since 1930. Their total of 457 for 6 was also the highest fourth-innings total ever in a time-bound Test. Greaves alone batted for 564 minutes and 388 balls, 201 of which came in a stand of 196 with Shai Hope, who scored 140 while battling an eye infection.

But numbers can't quite capture the texture of the way this game unfolded on the final day, the way improbability gave way to possibility and then, briefly, to something wilder. At 398 for 6, needing 132 from 33 overs with four wickets standing, there was a moment before the final session got underway when the outlandish seemed almost reasonable. Chase it down? Why not? But Greaves and Roach chose sense over theatre, hunkered down, and batted New Zealand into exhaustion.

By this stage, Tom Latham's side was cooked. Two days of toil will do that. Two frontline seamers - Matt Henry, Nathan Smith - gone to injury will do that. All three reviews burned before the final session will definitely do that. They were left to appeal and hope, appeal and watch the umpire's head shake, appeal again because what else was there to do?

On another day, with a review or two in hand, one of the two chances Michael Bracewell created in the final session - an LBW and a caught behind against Roach - results in a dismissal and opens up the tail and this becomes a very different story. But this day belonged to fortune meeting guts. Both sides had the latter - Bracewell bowled 55 overs of off-spin on a fifth day track offering little, while the two standing seamers, Zakary Foulkes and Jacob Duffy, sent down 76 second-innings overs between them and still had something left in the tank when the third new ball was available with four overs in the day remaining. West Indies just had more of the fortune.