Two days gone, just the three to go. All of a sudden, Test match cricket is starting to look awfully long. The scoring-rate in this match has not been unusually turgid for a Test - New Zealand scored at 3.4 runs per over, England, as they look to build a platform, at 2.2 - but the whole thing has felt like an examination of everyone's patience.

It has not helped that the pitch is docile and these sides are short of incisive bowling and confidence. It has made for two days of cautious sparring. It would be tempting, too, to conclude that Test cricket in New Zealand is often like this. As with the country's pace of life, so with the pace of its cricket ... slow, slow, slow.

But slow though life may be here, even the New Zealand public has found better things to do than watch the first home Test match against England for six years. On both days the crowd has totalled around 3,000, a substantial number of whom comprise England's travelling army of fanatics. Had this been a one-day international or Twenty20 game, there would have been five times as many people in attendance.

Ah, yes. Twenty20. Maybe that's it. So thoroughly has this new form of the game taken hold of everyone's thinking since the success of the inaugural world championship six months ago, and the advent of the Indian Premier League, that it is hard recallibrating the mind to the subtleties and tempo of a five-day marathon.

This may not simply be the case for spectators. The players, too, are having to reacquaint themselves with the disciplines of a game that lasts the equivalent of ten Twenty20s end to end. So far the batsmen have succeeded better than the bowlers.

That these two teams (with some changes of personnel, admittedly) have just met in five ODIs and two Twenty20s is only part of the story. With there also being a World Cup of 50-overs cricket staged last year, 2007 saw fewer Tests take place than any year since 1996. England played a healthy tally of 11 Tests it is true, but they also took part in 34 ODIs and eight Twenty20s, making it the busiest 12 months in their history.

In the past 14 months, New Zealand's schedule has been even more lopsided in favour of short games. Since January 1, 2007, they have played 38 ODIs, 10 Twenty20s and just four Test matches (not counting this one).

This reflects a significant shift of power from Test cricket towards the limited-overs formats and given the crazed popularity of Twenty20 it is hard to see when the shift will be reversed.

The precise effect this change will have on the way Test cricket is played is hard to gauge at this stage, but is likely to be profound.

Already, England's batsmen have come under fire for not converting enough fifties into hundreds in Tests, and New Zealand were guilty of the same shortcoming in their last two Test series against South Africa and Bangladesh.

On the first day of this Test, Brendon McCullum, one of the best Twenty20 batsmen in the world, adopted an approach that was much more akin to the limited-overs arena than a Test match. It was pretty much all-out attack: sometimes he stood a metre outside his crease and then advanced another couple of strides before having a swing.

His team might have been better served had he proceeded more slowly and scored 151 rather than 51, but when he was out he walked off cheerily enough, as though he'd achieved his purpose. Ross Taylor and Daniel Vettori perhaps had the better idea, interspersing attack with defence, and going a long way towards New Zealand building their best Test total for two years (the last time they actually played a Test that lasted five days was May 2006).

This Test may be short on excitement at the moment, but there is time for that to change. We are used to seeing batsmen get themselves out in Twenty20, but in Test cricket pressure can do the same thing when the game is in fourth and fifth days. If this Test creates a result, perhaps we will all forget about Twenty20 for a while and recall the delicious crescendo of a contest lasting 30 hours.

Explore Cricket

• Counties