Wellington complete Tiger slam by breaking one-day title drought

The State Shield final between Wellington and Canterbury at the Basin Reserve, won by Wellington by 53 runs, was a match of serpentine twists and turns, of dizzying swings of fortune.

There were in the match, played in bitterly cold conditions before an ardent and dedicated crowd, the best catch most spectators will ever see at close quarters and two or three others that were of the very highest quality.

There were, in total, five run outs which scrambled innings and gave impetus to the batting collapses of both teams.

Their were single incidents, moments of magical intensity, which changed the course of the match. And there was evidence of a vast reservoir of determination within the Wellington team which helped them become holders of all three major national cricket titles simultaneously.

Wellington plunged from 146/1 after a 117-run partnership between David Sales and Richard Jones who were the game's leading scorers to 192/9 before levelling off and reached 200/9, setting Canterbury 201 to win.

And Canterbury were 73/1 in the 21st over and moving steadily towards their winning target when they were overcome by the same unsteadiness and lost nine wickets for 74 runs to be all out for 147.

When Wellington's innings ended, the advantage in the match belonged unquestionably to Canterbury. Wellington had aimed to score 230 runs after batting first and winning the toss and when they were 125/1 in the 30th over they should have gone on to an even more substantial score - to 250 at least.

But two brilliant catches by Darron Reekers, another by Shanan Stewart and the run outs of Mayu Pasupati, Mark Jefferson and Paul Hitchcock knocked the stuffing out of their innings.

Canterbury thought 201 a gettable total on a wicket which had been glued together for this match and which held its pace much better than either captain had anticipated. But as they paced their run chase, led at first by Paul Wiseman who made 42, they were knocked back on their heels by two moments of brilliance from the Wellington field.

The most crucial was the run out of captain Gary Stead for 12 by Sales when Canterbury were 101. But the most spectacular was the catch taken by Pasupati near the backward square leg boundary which removed Aaron Redmond for six and left Canterbury 104/6.

Spectators will never see, from one year's end till the next, a catch as athletic, as dramatic or as influential as Pasupati's. He made the catch diving full length above the ground and snatching the ball out of the air with one large, outstretched hands.

That moment by itself knocked the stuffing from Canterbury, dented their confidence but at the same time led Wellington to believe deeply and unanimously that they were fated to win.

Pasupati returned to the bowling crease to claim in a single over the wickets of Reekers, who had begun to mount a threatening rearguard action and was out for 24, and of Carl Anderson. Canterbury went on to dismissal at 147 and to comprehensive defeat.

Wellington, in victory, were left in possession of all three of New Zealand's major domestic cricket titles - the State Max title which they won last year for the third year in succession, the Shell Trophy and the State Shield.

Of these the one-day championship was most satisfying. It has been 11 years since Wellington last won a national one-day title but the championship has eluded them, narrowly and in frustrating circumstances, several times in the interim.

"When I took over as coach in Wellington they were very keen to get the one-day game right," Wellington coach Vaughn Johnson said. "I felt in my first couple of years as coach I hadn't done that.

"That made this title especially pleasing."

Wellington captain Matthew Bell saw the completion of Wellington's grand slam - a Tiger slam as it was hailed in a festive dressing room - as similarly significant.

"To have come so close in the past and failed to win was disappointing," Bell said.

"You can say we have a different set up now and different players. The players involved in that period since we last one the one-day title have moved on but their history remains with us.

"People had been talking all week about Wellington choking but we didn't listen to that and more than anything we're aware that we've now firmly laid that chokers tag to rest.

"We've built something new here and we've won all three titles at one time to christen a new era for Wellington."

Stead, Canterbury's diehard captain whose own dismissal had turned the game, was hard-pressed to determine how the game, that had once appeared so winnable, had eluded his team.

"We were happy to have restricted them to 200," he said. "They should have scored 240 or 250 with the start they got, 200 on that wicket we should have got.

"But that's the pressure of a big game. It was a strange game with five or six run outs, with all sorts of strange things, with all sorts of swings of fortune and they came through better than we did.

"There are critical moments in any game and both sides experienced two or three throughout this game. Ultimately the partnership between Jones and Sales was the clinching factor if you look back at it."

The 117-run partnership between Sales and Jones was certainly the most productive of the match, as were their individual innings.

Sales, opening the innings for the second time, made 62 in 129 minutes - hard graft - and Jones 71 in 122 minutes. Sales hit only six fours and Jones four. There were 12 fours in total in Wellington's innings.

But after Sales' dismissal Wellington lost nine wickets for 46 runs in fewer than 14 overs - 6-33 in the last 10 overs during which not a single boundary was hit.

But for the partnership between Sales and Jones, Wellington's total would have been indefensible.

Great credit was conferred during the Wellington innings on those two batsmen but also on the Canterbury bowlers and fielders.

Redmond, who should have taken only a token role in bowling attack, ended up bowling 10 overs into a stiff and bitterly southerly breeze and took 2-46, including the wickets of Jones and Andrew Penn. Cleighten Cornelius bowled 10 overs and took 2-28.

And Reekers' catches helped propel Wellington down that headlong slope, from comfort at 146/1 to an eventual and dismal total which Canterbury might easily have surpassed.

During Canterbury's innings, Sales' run out of Stead was crucial. He dived to stop the ball as the players comitted themselves to a single, then, in one motion, returned the ball to bowler Matthew Walker who whipped off the bails. The run out of Peter Fulton, a youngster who made a composed 29, was also crucial.

"I suppose if you look at the game, we set ourselves up to get 250 and we were on target after 36 overs," Johnson said.

"We lost a couple of crucial wickets - Sales' dismissal was crucial - and then a lot of wickets fell very quickly.

"Canterbury put pressure on us and they held us to 200. We wanted more but we had to make that enough. Again the character in the side came through."