The freshers arrived at Otago University last week, and as Dunedin's Carisbrook ground filled up today you could almost drink in the start-of-term excitement. Not everyone was in the mood. Local tradition dictates that the scarfies (as the townies call the gownies) burn a sofa in the stadium, but the authorities were taking no chances. Not only were sofas banned, but so were bean-bags, large cushions - no measurements specified - and all forms of liquid, presumably because alcohol is dangerously flammable. But tell a student what to do, and the chances are he'll do precisely the opposite. Five minutes into New Zealand's reply - but four and a half hours after the first watered-down lager - smoke was seen coming from the scarfies' enclave. The object of the pyromania was unclear, but the security men in their luminous yellow bibs rushed in and snuffed out the flame and the rebellion. It wasn't the first time they had been called into action. The first eviction occurred in the eighth over, the first pitch invasion in the 18th. Pursued by five men in bibs, the invader left each one for dead with a series of hip-swaying dummies before he was finally tackled. The ground rose as one - a victory for the scarfies. The Barmy Army had spent most of the afternoon trying to put the din into Dunedin, but the ovation drowned out even them.

In an airy but cosy ground (there were nearly 14,000 here) it all made for a buzzing atmosphere, although boos were aimed at the police when they frogmarched away one of the Beige Brigade, who have gained fame recently by sporting the New Zealand one-day strip of the 1980s with evocative names like McKechnie (the man who faced Trevor Chappell's daisy-cutter) and Cairns (Lance, not Chris).

Lance was evoked on the field too. Nathan Astle started the series at Christchurch with a gritty undefeated 67, but had struggled after that. Now he batted as if New Zealand were chasing a bonus point. He pulled and punched Darren Gough for fours, and sliced Matthew Hoggard over gully for a six that crashed off the roof of the stand; he carved Gough through point and then through Paul Collingwood's hands at third man; he slogged Gough through mid-on and smashed Hoggard over long-on for six; and he cut Andrew Flintoff for four before banging him straight for six. His fifty came up from just 42 balls, and for a while he was unstoppable.

Earlier there had been a more cultured innings from Owais Shah. Since making an arrogantly glittering 62 against Pakistan at Lord's in July 2001, he had been limited to a second-ball duck in Zimbabwe, a 40-ball 7 amid the debris at Wellington, and a 0 not out at Napier where he didn't face a ball. He was in danger of being quietly erased from England's World Cup blueprint. But now Shah inked himself back in with a sprinkling of shots all round the wicket: a delicate flick off the pads here, a crashing square-cut there, then a lofted straight-drive off Daniel Vettori, followed next ball by an inventive inside-out chip over extra cover.

There was a telling moment when he got to fifty. He bowed his head coyly and gave a cursory wave of the bat to the two stands that housed 80% of the crowd square of the wicket. The last Pakistan-born batsman to score a fifty for England - Usman Afzaal at the Oval Test in August - celebrated with wild abandon, but Shah is less showy. There was time for one more sumptuous flick from off stump through square leg, before Cairns trapped him leg-before … and celebrated with wild abandon.

Lawrence Booth is assistant editor of Wisden.com. His reports will appear here throughout the tour.

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