The existence of luck as a force in sport, as a measurable quantity and a determinant of success and failure, is a concept which can often provoke warm debate.

There are those who dismiss luck as a phantom composed of equal parts of subjectivity and superstition and as a notion which only belittles great achievement. There are those who believe the finest players in any sport make their own luck through skill and boldness and those, at the other pole of the argument, who believe in luck with almost fanatic religiosity.

The question of how much luck influenced the relative positions of Auckland and Wellington at the end of the first day of their Shell Trophy match at the Basin Reserve today might easily ignite an energetic discussion among those respective factions. Because there is reasonable cause for argument that an act of fortune, good or bad depending on one's perspective and belief, had a part in deciding how well each team was placed when the day ended.

Auckland were 248-8 at stumps after Wellington had won the toss and bowled, taking into the match an attack comprised of four seamers - three of them current or former internationals - and one spinner, leaving their second spinner, Mark Jefferson as 12th man.

Their decision to invite Auckland to bat was given early validity when, within the space of 16 overs and less than an hour they removed three batsmen - the Auckland captain Blair Pocock, former Wellingtonian John Aiken and Richard King - for only 20 runs. Wellington were then on the verge of the sort of rout, with James Franklin, Andrew Penn, Iain O'Brien and Carl Bulfin all fresh and the ball relatively new, that might have made the toss crucial.

But the incident that might strengthen or challenge one's belief in luck had already occured and its importance became more pronounced as the day wore on and Auckland fought back to a position of reasonable parity.

Opener Tim McIntosh was dropped by Richard Jones at second slip from Andrew Penn in the third over of the day, only a few balls after Pocock was out and while Auckland was still one down with no runs on the board.

Had the catch been taken, and it was a standard slip catch, straight to Jones at about waist-height, Auckland's innings would have been thrown into greater chaos and Wellington would have fully exposed the visitors' middle-order.

Instead, McIntosh dug in, armed himself with the confident knowledge that luck was his ally, and went on to become the fulcrum around which the Auckland innings pivoted. He batted all of the first session and for all but 20 minutes of the second - for 12 minutes more than four hours - to score 61 runs and when he was out, Auckland was 161-5 and the carnage of the morning was a memory.

McIntosh put on 48 runs for the fourth wicket with Dion Nash. The pair saw Auckland from 20-3 to lunch at 68-3 and were separated when Nash was out for 29 five balls into the second session. McIntosh was then joined by Lou Vincent and their partnership, which occupied most of the afternoon session, carried Auckland away from the alarms of the morning and to a position of relative safety.

They put on 93 in 107 for the fifth wicket, Vincent contributing 53; their partnership flourishing till McIntosh was caught by Chris Nevin from O'Brien's bowling in the 62nd over. Vincent went on to score 65 in 147 minutes with nine fours and was out six overs into the final session when a ball from Bulfin nipped back marginally and nicked his leg bail.

Later but founded on their example there came displays of resistance from Brooke Walker who batted 95 minutes for 15 runs, from Tama Canning who made 21 from 54 balls and from Andre Adams who was not out at stumps after taking 28 runs from 32 balls with five boundaries.

At 248-8, with a full day gone and Auckland's innings not yet completed, Wellington would be hard-pressed to say their decision to bowl on winning the toss had been an unbridled success. There was possibly less for the seam bowlers in the first-day pitch, which seemed only faintly mottled with green, than Wellington had hoped for or calculated.

The seamers laboured away but, except for that early spell when the ball dominated the bat and three Auckland wickets fell, the Wellington attack lacked a lucid appearance of dominance, of penetration.

Franklin looked a little tired after his recent excursion into internation play, though he sent down 20 overs and took wickets at each end of the day's play, finishing with 2-63. Penn, who may surprise batsmen because his body language is so much that of a tired man, bowled 24 overs and ended with 1-38 and Bulfin bowled 16 overs and was rewarded with Vincent's wicket at a cost of 38 runs.

But the best of the four members of Wellington's seam-team was the newest and least heralded of its number - Iain O'Brien who bowled all of his 25 overs into the wind and who took the wickets of McIntosh, King and Nash for 61 runs.

All of O'Brien's victims were caught behind by Chris Nevin who has four catches in the innings so far.

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