After nudging a peak national audience of nearly 2 million across the first two days of the match at Adelaide Oval the third, and ultimately final, day attracted a peak national audience of 3.19 million.

It was only barely below the 3.196 million audience Nine attracted for the World Cup semi-final between Australia and India earlier this year.

Even before the ratings for last night's match were available Nine's head of sport, Steve Crawley, confirmed he was happy, even though Nine missed out on two days of broadcasting because of the tense finish under floodlights on Sunday night.

"It just felt right," Crawley said of the way the Test ended, with tailender Peter Siddle hitting the winning runs for Australia to seal a three-wicket victory against New Zealand.

"You don't mind if it goes three days when it's a result like that . . . It was fantastic."

Australia captain Steve Smith said after the match he thought the conditions at Adelaide Oval were more favourable for bowling with the pink ball than they had been in the preceding month's day-night Sheffield Shield match.

"I think the wicket here, compared to the two [Sheffield] Shield games that had been played on it [and] particularly the game we played on it [last month], it looked like the grass was a bit more lively. I think it was the same height as the grass in the shield game but it was probably just a tad greener, so that created a little bit more movement for the bowlers and kept the ball together and swinging for a long period," he said.

Black Caps captain Brendon McCullum said he felt the pitch was a bit too lively, but was not overly critical.

Crawley said Nine had no issues with the pitch, even though no team reached 250 in the match, for the first time ever in a Test at Adelaide Oval.

"There was nothing wrong with the pitch," Crawley said. "We're happy."