Cricket: Vincent leads Auckland to last-ball win over Canterbury

Discarded test batsman Lou Vincent led Auckland to a last-ball victory against Canterbury in Rangiora yesterday.

Unbeaten on 94, Vincent hit the winning run to complete a three-wicket win. Last week he made 156 in a four-day State Championship match against the Cantabrians.

Auckland reached their target of 201 with seven wickets lost.

The Canterbury players, however, are more likely to remember the State Shield match as one which got away from them.

They were given a promising start by opening batsmen Michael Papps and Shanan Stewart.

Papps confidently cut and pulled anything short, and Stewart drove handsomely when the ball was more full of length. After their 87-run partnership Canterbury lost momentum.

Auckland's medium-pacer Tama Canning and leg-spinner Brooke Walker were most effective.

* Otago fought back to beat defending champions Northern Districts by 15 runs and maintain a perfect start to the competition in Gisborne.

Otago got off to a rollicking start as Chris Gaffeney and Gareth Hopkins propelled them to 67-1 after only 10 overs, but their innings lost momentum and they were dismissed in the 49th over for 214.

Gaffeney, with 42 off 39 balls, and Hopkins with 43, looked to have created the ideal platform to launch Otago to a score approaching 280.

However, when Gaffeney departed with the score at 84, Northern captain Rob Hart introduced spinners Matthew Hart and Bruce Martin into the attack and from there Otago struggled.

Only Jeff Wilson with 30 looked capable of successfully milking the spinners as the middle order succumbed to the bowling of Martin, who took four for 28 from 10 overs.

The Northern reply was much the same as James Marshall and Nick Horsley pushed the score through to 60 before Horsley departed for 27.

Marshall was caught and bowled by Nathan McCullum shortly after as Otago spin twins McCullum and Nathan Morland applied the screws.

Martin and Joseph Yovich both got into the 30s for the home side, but when they departed, Northern needed to score at six an over for the last 10 overs with five wickets in hand.

They should have done it, and were still in the game at 190-7 after 47 overs with Jamie Lee and last man Ian Butler at the crease.

However, Otago held their nerve and Butler was run out after a mix-up to leave Northern 15 runs short and with one win from their first three matches.

* Teenager Ross Taylor belied his lack of experience with a match-winning unbeaten 81 from 76 balls in Central's seven-wicket defeat of Wellington.

- NZPA