Wellington extend healthy advantage over Central on absorbing day
The swarthy man in the white dress at McLean Park today and the inflatable woman who accompanied him, posing for pictures with the umpires at drinks in the final session, were among the least striking features of the third day of the Shell Trophy match between Wellington and Central Districts.Too much occured in the 99 overs completed today – 60.4 by Wellington who dismissed Central for 266 in their first innings, and 39 by Central to Wellington who were 85-2 in their second innings and 234 runs ahead overall – to make the courtly apprearance of a cross-dresser and his consort worth more than a casual glance.The day had enough vivid and prolonged drama, enough connected points of interest, enough subtle shifts of power and authority to take the breath away, even from a latex woman who had to be blown up in the first place.From the start of the day, when it was learned that Central had lost its captain and leading batsman Jacob Oram to the New Zealand one-day side when they were 151-3 replying to Wellington’s first innings of 415 and when he was the next batsman due at the crease, this was a day flecked by incident and coloured by the unusual.They were then bent to their task of scoring 266 in their first innings to avoid the follow on when the removal of Oram from an already depleted batting lineup was announced and they were suddenly confronted by a burden which had grown in proportion while they slept.Yet by contrasting means; at first through dogged application and slow degrees and later through the combined efforts of their last four batsmen, who refused to submit to circumstance, they lifted themselves to the follow on total and were all out, for 266, just as the peak was reached.This was a mighty and compelling effort which brightened the day and which lost none of its lustre when Wellington, for whom Matthew Bell made 31 and Selwyn Blackmore an unbeaten 33, reached 85-2 in theeir second innings before stumps to lead by 234 with eight wickets in hand.Central had resumed their first innings this morning at 151-3 when Oram 350 kilometres away in Welington, with 17-year-old Greg Todd pressed into service as his replacement and with Craig Spearman raised overnight to their captaincy.The first session of the was a gruelling contest between bat and ball in which Central added 44 runs from 37 overs for the loss of three wickets, in which Glen Sulzberger held together their innings with a personal contribution of 44. Sulzberger batted 268 minutes in total for his runs, including more than two hours today to lift his overnight score of 26 by 18, to fall eight minutes before the luncheon adjournemnt.In that period of determined occupation of the crease, he was supported by Mark Douglas, with whom he added 47 runs in 85 minutes, with Todd who applied himself diligently to the huge task of replacing Oram and batted 52 minutes for two runs and with Sigley, with whom he added 17 in 40 minutes.When Sigley was out for 13 in the second over after lunch, in a period in which Wellington’s spinners Jeetan Patel and Mark Jefferson were holding sway, and when Central was 195-7, still 70 runs short of the follow on mark, their bid to avoid following on seemed hopeless.But the last four men to the wicket, youngsters and specialist bowlers all, refused to give up the fight and to concede any moral superiority to Wellington. The largest member of that club was Ewan Thompson who came to the wicket with Sulzberger’s dismissal in the shadow of the lunch break and who was still there when the innings ended 52 minutes later, unbeaten on 30.His battle to avoid the follow on was never a solitary one and he had determined support from Michael Mason, who made 32, and from Taraia Robin who twice in one over hoisted Patel over the square leg boundary for six.Central might have been helped to the follow on mark by a tactical error by Wellington. The visitors chose to employ the second new ball of the innings in the 97th over and after the spinners, operating well with the old ball, had taken four wickets for 25 runs in 21 overs.In fact, Central had added only 58 runs from 45 overs before the new ball was taken but they then added 40 runs from the first 10 overs with the new ball, including Robin’s 12 runs from Patel, to suddenly find themselves within sight of the follow on. Four byes from a wayward bouncer from Carl Bulfin took them closer and they limped to their target with singles, surviving a series of confident appeals, before their innings expired.Wellington can at least say their spinners proved themselves and showed batting will be no easy task against spin on the final day. Jefferson finished with 2-33 from his 21 overs and Patel took 5-48, his best return in the Shell Trophy and his second five wicket bag – the first since his debut.”It’s definitely starting to do a bit,” Patel said. “Jeffo, particularly, was getting it to pop and spin so it’s not going to be easy to bat out there tomorrow. It’s probably good we don’t have to bat last.”There was even a suggestion today that Wellington might not have enforced the follow on, had they been in a position to do so, because of their concern about the difficulty of batting last on this pitch.They now have to make the difficult determination of how many runs they need before a declaration and how much time they might require to dismiss Central after taking three sessions or 111.4 overs to do so in their first innings.