The short stuff was part of the plan - Edwards

Reflecting on his career-best performance of 7 for 87 on the third day in Napier, Fidel Edwards, the West Indies fast bowler, said his ploy of bringing in variations to his bowling helped keep the New Zealand batsmen in check.

West Indies fought back to restrict New Zealand to 371 after they were cruising at 316 for 4. Jerome Taylor and Darren Powell struck early blows before Edwards, who took the first two wickets to fall in the opening session, returned to mop up the tail and keep New Zealand's first-innings lead down to 64. Edwards' performance also surpassed his previous best first-class figures of 5 for 22.

"It is still a good batting pitch so I tried to mix up my deliveries as much as possible," Edwards said. "You had to do something to get wickets out there and I looked at all my options. Using the short ball was just part of the plan to unsettle the New Zealand batsmen and it worked some of the time.

"I felt really good with the way the ball was coming out and obviously I'm thrilled to get my career-best figures. You could say it was my day and I decided to make the most of it. Hopefully it was the kind of performance that could see my team go on to win the Test match and with it the series. That would be wonderful for us."

Edwards had earlier passed the 100-wicket mark with the dismissal of Daniel Flynn on the second day. In the process, he joined his half-brother Pedro Collins in the 100-wicket club. "I was giving him (Flynn) some short stuff so I decided to slip in a slower ball to see how he would handle it. He pushed it back and I was happy when I took the catch."

"We are the first brothers to each take 100 Test wickets so that added a bit extra to the moment. I spoke to Peddy (Collins) before the match and he told me it was a chance to create history so that was a bit of added motivation as well."