Still a tight call before Wellington can win

Wellington will look to its captain Richard Jones to weather a final, desperate assault from Otago's spin bowlers and to carry them to outright victory on the third day of an extraordinary State Championship match at the Basin Reserve tomorrow.

By the end of the second day yesterday Otago had been out twice and Wellington once, 33 wickets had fallen in six sessions, and Wellington needed 79 runs to win with three second innings wickets in hand.

Jones, 49 not out at the end of the day's play, held the key to Wellington's bid for victory. In a match ruled by spin bowlers, Jones was building a vital innings which may ultimately decide which team wins and which loses.

On this chaotic day, Wellington resumed at 74/5 in reply to Otago's first innings of 130 but lost its last five wickets for 34 runs and was all out for 108, conceding a 30-run first innings lead.

Otago reached 116/4 in its second innings, then lost its last six wickets for 24 runs and was out for 140.

Wellington, left 171 to win, was 92/3 at the close of play.

The task of scoring 79 runs with sevens wickets in hand would normally be an undemanding one but in this bizarre match, in which wickets have fallen like ninepins, nothing can be taken for granted. It was enough that 15 wickets fell on the first day - that all of Otago's first innings and half of Wellington's had already been completed.

Then nine wickets fell in the first session today, completing a total of 24 wickets in the first four sessions. Four more wickets fell in the second session, though there was a hiatus between lunch and drinks when Craig Cumming and Craig Pryor were together and no wickets fell. Normal service was resumed after tea when two Otago and three Wellington wickets tumbled, keeping up an average of more than five wickets per session.

And from all the chaos there emerged an unlikely hero. Young Wellingtonian Luke Woodcock, chosen to make his first-class debut in this match as a left-hand opening batsman, was called on to bowl his slow left armers and responded heroically, taking four wickets for three runs from 6.5 overs.

In an act of unaccountable generosity, Woodcock was not introduced into the Wellington attack till the 46th over when Otago was already 116/4 and prospering for the first time in the match.

Wellington had, till that moment, relied on its sole specialist spinner Jeetan Patel. It was not surprising that Wellington, in surveying the pitch before the first day's play and on winning the toss, had decided to bowl first but had taken only one spinner into the match.

There was nothing in the appearance of the pitch that suggested it would take turn as it has over these past two days.

Patel had not quite risen to Wellington's expectations. Otago's spinners, Nathan Morland and Rob Smith, had taken seven wickets between them to cause the destruction of Wellington's first innings. They had also taken between them the five first innings wickets that fell today.

Morland finished with 4-26 from 16.5 overs and Smith 3-21 from 13.

There was a reasonable expectation that Patel would be Wellington's most effective bowler today and he had a good platform to build on when Andrew Penn and James Franklin, taking the new ball, left Otago 43/4.

But Cumming and Pryor got away from Wellington and, during their prosperous partnership of 73 for the fifth wicket in 114 minutes, the balance of the match had swung wildly in Otago's favour.

Patel had not been able to make the inroads into the Otago innings that the situation had demanded of him. Woodcock, Wellington's only other spinning option and a last-ditch one at that, had been called on in his stead.

He claimed Cummings's wicket, severing the most dangerous partnership of the match till that point, with his first ball in first-class cricket. The ball pitched short of a length and outside off stump, bit and turned lazily and Cumming leaning forward, deflected it into the gloves of keeper Glynn Howell.

Woodcock, on debut, had already been Wellington's leading scorer in his first first-class innings, providing 30 of their 108 runs in the first innings.

The brilliant start to his first-class bowling career continued a remarkable match.