Cricket: Auckland have slow-paced final at their mercy

The first two days of the arm wrestle masquerading as the State Championship cricket final ended firmly in Auckland's favour yesterday.

At 208 for five in reply to Wellington's 235, Auckland have their hands firmly on the controls and in a position from which they could only blame themselves if they did not take the honours.

With a run-rate struggling to reach 2.50 in the first 200 overs of the match on Eden Park's outer oval, the handful of spectators had little to get excited about.

It was, nevertheless, absorbing.

The mopping up needed 28 minutes as the visitors added 13 runs in losing their remaining two wickets yesterday.

Andre Adams took his tally to a deserved five by deceiving Neal Parlane with a purler which ripped his leg stump out of the ground.

Parlane (74) was the only Wellington batsman to venture beyond 35.

The Wellington bowlers' response was encouraging as former test openers Matt Horne and Richard Jones were given nothing.

Mark Gillespie got through an opening spell of nine overs for just 10 runs. His new-ball partner Azhar Abbas was even more miserly, giving up only five from seven overs.

They were justly rewarded with a wicket each.

Abbas enticed a hook shot from Horne which went as high as it did long before falling into Gillespie's safe hands just inside the boundary.

Gillespie was rewarded when he cleaned out Jones as Auckland slumped to 15 for two to send an eerie feeling through the ranks, reminding them that Wellington lost three wickets at that score.

Surprisingly, Auckland captain Brooke Walker took up the challenge of batting at four - after coming in six places lower at times this season - and while the pace did not pick up, he and Rob Nicol brought some stability in adding 28 runs in an hour, with Walker taking that time for nine.

Nicol remained and as the venom went from the Wellington attack, eventually reaching a match-high 75 in 261 minutes, including 11 boundaries and a six.

The hard luck was with Aaron Barnes, who fell for 29, stranded one shy of his 3000th first-class run.

On the other hand, the wicket did produce a milestone, with Gillespie celebrating his 100th at this level.

Tama Canning mixed it up cleverly to reach 55 by stumps, sharing an unbroken sixth-wicket partnership of 35 with Carl Cachopa.

How much further they progress could determine the course of the match.