Aussies win the bore war

Amid all the hoopla of the first day-night Test and the curiosity as to how the pink ball would perform in its debut under the spotlights, it was a bit of good old-fashioned tedium that netted Australia their most prized outcome on Friday.

After Black Caps skipper Brendon McCullum finally won a toss and got to bat first in the preferred daylight conditions, the early removal of opener Martin Guptill brought the tourists' best batsman Kane Williamson to the wicket with the ball still in its mint magenta state.

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But any suggestions that a change of hue might also alter Williamson's dominance over Australia's bowlers were dispatched as easily as the manner in which the 25-year-old batting wiz flicked a Mitchell Starc full toss to the square leg boundary to get his innings underway.

Thoughts of his previous scores in the Trans-Tasman Series to date of 140, 59, 166 and 32no flashed before the Australians as the Black Caps skipper-in-waiting cruised to 19 off as many balls faced.

That was the point at which spinner Nathan Lyon was thrown the ball, a rare sight for a tweaker to be seen at the crease before lunch on day one of an Adelaide Test even when Shane Warne was in his pomp, and the game began to change.

With Lyon gaining grip from the surface at one end and Peter Siddle, the bowler who confessed to prising batsmen out through monotony when speaking prior to the Test, the runs were stemmed and ultimately dried up altogether.

And the pressure began to build on Williamson, who managed just three more runs from the final 39 deliveries he faced after making such an assured start.

Before Starc ended a string of 15 consecutive dot balls to NZ's best batsman and then pinned him lbw, bowling wide on the crease as Williamson found himself in a rare tangle as he attempted to find an equally elusive run through the leg side.

WATCH: Starc's strike sees end of Williamson

"It wasn't me that got the wicket, but as a team that's what we want to improve on," Siddle said at the end of a day when he had become just the 15th Australian to reach 200 Test match wickets.

"To get that result, especially to him (Williamson), it gave us all a little chuckle that it worked and that with a player in good form you can still break them with the basic part of cricket.

"That was a good thing for us, even throughout the whole day.

"At times we were a little bit wayward, but I think all in all it was a pretty good performance with the ball, being able to build pressure."

In the days leading into the historic Test, Siddle had spoken about the success he's enjoyed against Williamson, the world's second-ranked Test batsman behind South Africa's AB de Villiers, by employing a strategy of "patience".

Which was then extrapolated to mean a battle of boredom.

The 30-year-old, who now shares the same number of Test scalps as legendary quick Jeff Thomson, has employed the same strategy with similarly memorable results against batsmen the calibre of England's Kevin Pietersen, who Siddle haunted during the 2013-14 Ashes whitewash.

It's a method that Siddle maintains has merit, regardless of the name he's bowling to at the pitch's far end.

"You look at all the class players in world cricket, it's worked hasn't it?" he said earlier this week.

"It worked against Sachin (Tendulkar), it worked against 'KP' (Pietersen), it works against (Virat) Kohli.

"That's the thing – it works. 

"It's pretty basic but it happens against all the best teams."

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Mitchell Starc and the Australians were overjoyed with Williamson's wicket // Getty

Among those who did not subscribe to Siddle's strategy was NZ coach Mike Hesson who, upon learning of the Australia seamer's theory, dismissed it as not being applicable to a batsman of Williamson's unflappable temperament.

"Many sides have tried different things against Kane – some have been more successful than others," Hesson said in the aftermath of Siddle's comments.

"Kane will just do the same thing he does normally, watch the ball and just see what happens.

"He's playing well, he's a really unflustered sort of character.

"I don't think he will have read it (Siddle's comments)."

Whether Williamson paid heed to the plan remains a moot point, and there was nothing rash in his dismissal to suggest he had been stymied into taking an unnecessary risk, as became the case with Pietersen, who saw the ploy as an affront to his ego.

But there was no doubt the dismissal of the batsman who has become Australia's most prized scalp for his lowest score of the series was a red-letter moment on a pink ball day.