Hamilton, March 19: India may have wrested control of the first Test by getting within a run of the New Zealand total with ample wickets in hand, but Rahul Dravid, one of three half-centurions on the day, said batting on the Seddon Park wicket was not easy.

"It was a hard-fought day. There was something in the wicket right through," Dravid said after the second day’s play on Thursday. Excerpts:

On the game: In terms of runs we did quite well. It was a hard-fought day. There was something in the wicket right through. They pitched the ball in the right areas. I am pretty happy with the score since there is a lot of time left in the Test match.

Four wickets down means that we have our noses ahead. Sachin is still batting really well. Yuvi, Dhoni and the lower order can bat. Probably, we may have liked to have lost one less wicket. It would have been an ideal scenario for us. But we are happy with the position and hopefully can build on it tomorrow. The first session is going to be critical. If we bat well in that period and build a lead, we are hopeful to put the pressure on them in the third innings.

On the pitch: There was something in it for the bowlers right through the day. The ball kept swinging a bit. They were bowling in areas where it was not ease to drive. It kept the bowlers interested. Even when you are batting right, you always felt that you were never really in. We had to work hard for our runs. We saw through some difficult periods and there was some quality batting. Gautam batted very well up front and Sachin played really well towards the end to get us to a good position. We hope to capitalise on that.

On his knock: I felt really good today. My feet moved well, I got into right position right through the day, and was scoring at a fairly decent clip. Got a pretty good one at that stage, even as the ball was sort of 60-65 overs old, it was still seaming a little bit Overall, I am quite satisfied.