The pitch has suffered little wear and tear and there is plenty of time for a result, even if rain intervenes.
Read more: Queen's Birthday Honours for McCullum, Hesson
The 121-run fifth-wicket partnership between Brendon McCullum ONZM (officer of the New Zealand order of merit in today's Queen's Birthday honours) and B-J Watling FNZTCH (the first New Zealander to score a test century at Headingley) was pivotal in establishing primacy.
McCullum became the second New Zealand test player to 6000 runs behind Stephen Fleming (7172), moving to 6008 with his 55.
Watling broke a 66-year-old jinx at the ground on his way to a fifth test century and one that, irrespective of dismissal, will take his average into the 40s for the first time since his debut when it was 78.
Earlier, a 99-run partnership off 87 balls between Martin Guptill and Ross Taylor propelled New Zealand forward.
With Tom Latham (3) and Kane Williamson (6) caught behind, they blazed without fear in what appeared to be a closer relative to the T20 rather than the test species of the game. Their 50-partnership came up in 28 balls.
Taylor (48 off 48 balls) drove his first ball to the boundary through the covers off Stuart Broad. He was dropped at third slip the following over by Gary Ballance on six before shrugging off his legside shackles to pull Ben Stokes' first ball, a long hop, into the stand to go to 30.
Guptill reached 70 off 72 balls, as he did in the first innings at Lord's. Forty of his runs came between gully and cover but his most memorable stroke was the straight six off Moeen Ali to bring up his half-century in 47 balls.
Their batting pinballed off the accuracy of New Zealand's slip cordon who seldom share the limelight when snaffling edges generated by alpha-male fast bowlers.
They deserved to take a bow on the third morning, helping dismiss the hosts for 350, leaving the first innings scores level after rain delayed the start by 15 minutes.
Spread in a swoosh formation from behind the stumps, wicketkeeper Luke Ronchi, Taylor, Mark Craig, Guptill and gully Kane Williamson weathered a miserable Leeds morning flawlessly. Tim Southee slotted in between Craig and Guptill, when he wasn't shaping deliveries away from English batsmen on his way to the team's best figures of four for 83 from 30 overs.
The cordon's skill set is often one of the most underrated in any team. Life can be tricky when you have a split-second to pouch a 156g stitched leather missile with - Ronchi excepted - bare hands. The sextet hunched their shoulders into a freezing 13-knot westerly, sheltered by nothing more than new-fangled fibre shirts and cable vests and sweaters.
It must have felt like the North Pole.
Yet snap, crackle, pop, Craig, Taylor and Guptill snared Ian Bell (12), Jos Buttler (10) and Moeen Ali (1) respectively, reducing England to 267 for eight, having added 14 runs.
A 51-run stand between Mark Wood (19) and Broad (46) intervened before Ronchi caught Wood in Craig's first over of the day, a wicket maiden, on his way to two for 48.
England compiled 83 runs for their final two wickets compared to New Zealand's 69. If anything, New Zealand fell into the same pattern of bowling too short and getting larruped, particularly by Broad, through the legside.
However, their resurgence was a credit to their tenacity, considering England were 177 without loss. The second new ball snared eight for 114 in 28.2 overs.
Southee was at his best as he stuck to a regimented off stump channel in a 10-over spell which yielded four for 27. His face registered that familiar smilace (smile and grimace) as he strode to his mark, an expression that brought to mind a latter-day Danny Morrison reveling in his work.
#Ford, the driving force behind the Black Caps
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