Nash hints at better days ahead for himself and Auckland

Dion Nash and Kyle Mills scored centuries and forged a partnership, hardened by the flames of adversity, which reshaped Auckland's Shell Trophy match against Wellington and gave it balance at the end of its third day today.

Nash has worked hard to reinvent himself as a batsman recently, as injury continues to curtail his effectiveness as a bowler, and his 281-minute innings of 100 - part of a 185-run eighth wicket stand with Mills - made a clamorous announcement of his success in that endeavour.

Nor is that success confined any longer to the batting crease. Nash's broad smile tonight was provoked by equal elements of delight at his batting performance, Auckland's strengthened position and the discovery that the prognosis for his bowling is not as bleak as it recently seemed.

Nash was able to turn his arm over in the nets on Tuesday night for the first time in a long while and he tentatively forecast last night that he would be bowling some cautious medium pace before the Trophy season ends.

Nash beamed also at the effort of his outstanding partner Mills, a dark horse batting No 9 in the Auckland order, who reached his highest first class score, his maiden first class century and was 107 not out when stumps were drawn.

The pair came together at lunch, after Wellington had taken six wickets in the morning session to have Auckland 109/7, to limit their overall lead to 66 runs and to threaten to end the game by the end of this, the third day.

On them in a sudden heated rush fell all the responsibility of the Auckland innings. If they failed, so too would Auckland and there seemed no other possibility than that Wellington would add an outright win to the first innings points they achieved on Tuesday.

Nash and Mills resolved themselves to stay together as long as fortune allowed and to do as much as resolution permitted to repair Auckland's position. Neither imagined that, almost four hours later when Nash was out after having completed his fourth first class century in 281 minutes, Auckland would hold the upper hand in the match.

Despite Nash's fall within half an hour of stumps, when Auckland were 294 and after he and Mills had come within four runs of a 62-year-old eighth wicket record for the province, the match was all but saved. Mills went on to his century in 242 minutes, from 185 balls, and Auckland was 317 at stumps, 271 runs ahead of Wellington with a day remaining.

"In some ways it was a difficult wicket to get in on but when you got in it became easier," Nash said. "At lunch I just said to Kyle we've got to get to wherever we can get to. We'd just lost a lot of quick wickets - Wellington had started to get some reverse swing before lunch and had nicked a couple out - and I said we've just got to bat as long as we can.

"Kyle's a good young guy and so we just got our heads down and did what we could. At the start it was just a bit of fun but we got further and further and we started to realise we were making a difference.

"My only disappointment was that I got out before Kyle got his century because I would have liked to be there with him when that happened. But that's the way it goes. I think that we're at least in the game now. They'll have to play well to win."

Nash said he hadn't been conscious this season of greater pressure accumulating on him to succeed with the bat, now that he is being chosen for his batting ability and no longer for his bowling.

"More than anything I want to be part of the Auckland side and to be contributing to it as much as I can," he said. "I've had a few starts this season and haven't gone on and I've had a few failures but I've just kept plugging away, hoping the runs will come."

The most extraordinary feature of Mills and Nash's partnership, more than the success of two players who have been styled as bowlers first, batsmen second, was the way in which their resilient partnership altered the moral tenor of the game.

When Tama Canning was out to the last ball of the morning session and Auckland had plunged from 16/1 at the resumption to 109/7, the Wellington bowlers and their supportive fieldsman, were cock-a-hoop, certain of their superiority.

But Mills and Nash began, throughout the early part of their partnership, to chip away at the mental citadel Wellington had built themselves. Gradually, brick by brick, Wellington's massive confidence fell away.

By the end of the second session, the Wellington bowling attack seemed ragged, weary and frustrated. They no longer found wickets easy to come by and their body language expressed their flagging will and their exasperation.

Wellington did not bowl well throughout the second and third sessions. When they couldn't break Nash and Mills partnership, intimidate the batsmen or easily chip them out, their effort began to falter and their will failed.

Wellington coach Vaughan Johnson leapt to his bowlers' defence and said they were understandably tired after two hard and hot games in Wellington and in Napier. Wear and tear is beginning to leave its mark on the Wellington attack: Andrew Penn has torn a large flap of skin from his foot and had to have a local anaesthetic today before he could bowl and Carl Bulfin has developed tendonitis in both knees.

But Johnson admitted the Wellington bowlers faltered in their task today.

"I'm disappointed with the fact we didn't bowl at times as we should have," Johnson said. "We dropped in intensity and that was disappointing but we have too look at the positives and the positives were that we got into them but we just didn't finish them off.

"I have to say I'm 100 per cent supportive of the way Nash and Mills batted. I hated it...hated every minute of it but I'd have to pat both of them on the back for it. They were two of the best innings I've seen in all the time I've been around first class cricket."