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Pedro Collins gallantly fronted a spirited West Indies effort at damage control on the third day of the second Cable & Wireless Test yesterday.

Yet it was still not enough to compensate for the batting recklessness of the previous afternoon that committed them to an unequal struggle for the remainder of the match and their position remained as daunting at the close as it was 24 hours earlier.

Although they restricted New Zealand's second innings to 243, it left them with a target of 474, a total never before achieved to win any Test.

Openers Chris Gayle and Wavell Hinds nervously survived four overs at the end of the day but, on a wearing pitch and with their inconsistent batting, the West Indies would do well even to extend their purposeful opponents very far into the last day.

Their most realistic hope of survival rests with the weather in the first month of the rainy season but the forecast is not favourable.

For 28 overs on a sultry, overcast day, broken into four spells, Collins charged in with the George Challenor Stand at his back, harassing the batsmen with the stamina and nagging control, if not disconcerting bounce, of Joel Garner, the man whose name the end now bears.

It was a responsibility thrust on his square shoulders by the absence for all but the first six overs of the day of Merv Dillon, the established leader of the attack.

Dillon succumbed again to the lower back strain that obliged him to rest for a week before the match, restricting captain Carl Hooper to three green fast bowlers with 19 Tests between them.

It proved a coming of age for Collins. The slim left-armer from Boscobel delivered exactly a third of the overs, making the ball move both ways as he added five wickets to the one he already had overnight for his best return in his 12 Tests, six for 76.

But it would have required the kind of miracle Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh used to perform at Kensington to restore the West Indies to a position of near parity.

A first innings deficit of 230 meant New Zealand had to be rolled over a second time round for not much over 150. At 88 for five, ten minutes after lunch, when Collins induced a second slip catch from Craig McMillan's drive, it seemed possible.

But, by then, Ramnaresh Sarwan had let two sharp chances off Collins spill to the turf, the second when Nathan Astle was 12, and Astle launched a blistering assault on the wayward Adam Sanford that changed the course of the innings.

Sarwan's first error denied Collins two wickets in two balls.

The left-armer gained an lbw verdict as opener Lou Vincent padded away an inswinger 25 minutes into the day.

Next ball, the left-handed Chris Harris pushed firmly to Sarwan's right hand at short-leg where the most recent occupant was the sharp Wavell Hinds, but Sarwan couldn't hold on to the catch that would have made New Zealand 11 for three.

Harris was eventually trapped on the crease and lbw to Darren Powell at 48, soon after which Sarwan at cover spilled Astle's firm, low drive off Collins to his right.

It was not the happiest 22nd birthday for Sarwan, generally an outstanding fielder. What with his first ball duck in the first innings, he was unlikely to have celebrated it with champagne and an expensive dinner at Sandy Lane last night.

Astle soon made Sarwan pay for the mistake.

New Zealand were 69 for four when Hooper's arm-ball finally removed the frustrating night-watchman Daryl Tuffey to a slip catch on the stroke of lunch.

When Hooper mystifyingly replaced himself with Sanford immediately on resumption, Astle greeted the change by hammering the fast bowler for four boundaries in his first over, one in his second and two more in his third in which captain Stephen Fleming also helped himself to one.

Sanford's spell of three overs cost 35 and changed the course of the innings.

Astle proceeded to gather a typically brisk 77 with 11 fours and Fleming, batting three places below the No.3 he occupied for his first innings hundred because of a stiff neck, got 34 as they put on 76.

By the time Astle became another Collins victim to an edged catch, deflecting one angled across him to Brian Lara at first, and Fleming miscued a hook off Sanford that Wavell Hinds gathered in over his head in front of the Kensington Stand at square-leg, New Zealand were 181 for seven.

By then Collins was on his haunches with exhaustion and the other bowlers, once more, couldn't complete the job as the last three wickets yielded 62.

Sanford did sneak one low through the left-handed Daniel Vettori's defence to uproot the middle-stump at 205, and Collins' bouncer with the second new ball gained him his first return of five Test wickets in an innings, courtesy of Robbie Hart's gentle hook to square-leg.

Unlike the West Indies bowlers, New Zealand's can bat, as Tuffey and Vettori already showed. Now Ian Butler, the No.11, enforced the point with four handsome boundaries in 26 off 31 before he too fell to Collins.

They were redundant runs for New Zealand already had a match-winning advantage. But it was further frustration for the weary West Indies who now face their two most difficult days of the season.

© The Barbados Nation