A lucky few watched from the embankment and stands at the Basin Reserve as Brendon McCullum became the first New Zealand batsman to score a test triple century, cutting a delivery from India's Zaheer Khan to the boundary at 11.46am yesterday.
Moments later he was caught behind off Zaheer for 302, leaving the ground to a standing ovation after an innings of 559 balls and 647 minutes.
For many New Zealand fans, this will be the greatest cricketing feat they will see.
''The moment that 300 came up and the applause that was ongoing for quite a while, that really hit home to me, I guess, that it was such a significant achievement for a New Zealander and something that I'll certainly remember for the rest of my life,'' McCullum said afterwards.
Before the day's play, McCullum warmed up in a jocular fashion and stretched extensively, using one of the team's industrial rubber bands.
He received an ovation before going out to bat. Queues of people waited to get into the ground to see history made.
''After every ball that I defended, left or got a single they started cheering and that made me a little bit more nervous, to be honest,'' McCullum said.
''I sort of then probably understood the magnitude of what the task at hand was and how much, I guess, joy it gives fans of this cricket team to see guys succeed and to see records broken.''
An economist somewhere will no doubt carefully calculate the cost to the country's productivity as the nation stopped and watched yesterday. It is sure to run into the millions. The numbers always do.
What the report will not tell you is that this was the summer the public fell back in love with the Black Caps, and back in love with McCullum.
As a child, Brendon was often with his brother, Nathan, on the sidelines while his father, Stu, opened the batting for Otago or Albion.
As a young man he was forced to chose between promising careers in cricket and rugby.
Sir Richard Hadlee phoned Brendon to give him a ticking off for doing some pre-season training with Southern while Otago Daily Times sports editor Hayden Meikle was interviewing the talented sportsman.
McCullum was actually picked ahead of Dan Carter at age group level and could easily have forged a career in the winter code.
Many years later, I had a brief chat with him during the lunch break of the 2007-08 one-day final. Otago needed what I felt was an unlikely 311 to end a 20-year title drought.
But he was so confident, telling me Auckland was 30 or 40 short. He promptly went out and blasted the most remarkable one-day innings I've seen - 170 off 108 deliveries.
That brash nature and his willingness to gamble has not always gone down so well with the New Zealand public.
When Ross Taylor was dumped as captain, some suggested McCullum had helped engineer Taylor's demise.
He was forced to defend his character in the media and, before this summer, McCullum had not scored a test 100 in three years.
He was under enormous pressure and has delivered in spectacular fashion, with a double hundred in the first test setting up a famous win against India going before his triple century yesterday.
His score of 302 will now go down in New Zealand cricket folklore, alongside Sir Richard Hadlee's nine for 52, Nathan Astle's 222, Mark Greatbatch's 146 not out to save a test against Australia in Perth, and, of course, Martin Crowe's long-standing former record of 299, which Baz eclipsed.
- Additional reporting: The New Zealand Herald and APNZ
