Seldom is a player who carries his bat through an innings for a century, in a winning cause, overshadowed in having done so. But that was the lot today of opener Llorne Howell who batted throughout Auckland's innings in their four-wicket State Shield win over Central Districts at Pukekura Park and whose feat was thrown into shadow by the extraordinary performance of his opening partner Matt Horne.

Howell batted through 48.3 overs for 106 runs and with two mighty blows from the last two balls of the innings raised his century and completed Auckland's victory with nine balls to spare. His should be the lion's share of the applause for a win which, reversing the result of the meeting between these teams four days ago, keeps Auckland healthy in this season's race for the State Shield.

But Howell would have shared in a consensus among most observers that Auckland's win owed most to Horne's brilliant, almost unbelievable, quickfire innings at the top of the order and that Auckland made much harder work of victory than Horne's performance should have allowed.

He will admit that he was part contributor-part spectator in his partnership of 108 with Horne for the first wicket which lasted only 13 overs and which was founded on Horne's innings of 68 from 46 balls in 60 minutes. He will concede that after Horne's spectacular innings, which included 15 boundaries, and after Auckland had taken only one ball more than 10 overs to post their first 100 runs, they should have won far more easily.

Horne had given Auckland a platform from which they should have achieved not only a win but the valuable bonus point which could have accompanied it. But after his dismissal in the 13th over, when Howell was 35, their momentum was gradually lost and their active run rate diminished.

Auckland scored only 37 runs in 10 overs and 70 runs in 20 overs following Horne's loss. They seemed possessed by a sudden inertia, lost in a pervading lethargy, gripped by the conviction that they only had to persevere for the runs to come.

Howell offered his innings as the bulwark around which the larger innings could be constructed but even he struggled to maintain any kind of tempo. He knew that with patience the winning target would be achieved but there were times when Auckland's sanguine belief in that probability was a burden to them.

To achieve the bonus point which would have been a larger fillip to their Shield campaign, they needed to overtake Central's total in 40 overs. When they were 97 without loss after 10 overs and 108/1 after 13, they were strolling towards that mark.

Then they lost their way, saw their run rate fall from eight to six, below five and ultimately to three for a large part of the crucial centre of their innings. When the 40th over had been bowled, they were five wickets down and still 48 runs short of Central's total.

"I think we thought we had the cat in the bag and we took longer than we should have to adjust to the slowness of the wicket," Howell said.

"Then it became a game we could lose. It never should have been that."

Howell said the Central spinners, notably Glen Sulzberger, had been able to put the brakes on Auckland's scoring through the middle of the innings. Sulzberger's first five overs cost only 10 runs and his 10 overs brought two wickets at a cost of 27 runs. That analysis mirrored the performance of his Auckland counterpart Mark Haslam during Central's innings.

Howell said the Pukekura Park pitch which, because of its slowness, had made forceful scoring from the medium pacers difficult when the ball was older, gave too much assistance to the spinners.

"It was turning square at times," he said. "Instead of being able to play down the ground, you had to look to work it around the corner from the spinners, to try and work it square of the wicket.

"Under the circumstances I thought mine was quite a good hundred. It's a great deal easier when the ball is coming on."

Howell had been, for a time at least, an observer of Horne's brilliance. When Auckland was 43/0 after five overs - a remarkable total - Horne was 40 and Howell was only one and had faced two balls.

"I couldn't get any of the strike," he said. "It was like the last game. I just seemed to be standing there watching what was going on."

Howell eventually made up for that start which was slow, not because he was overcautious, but because Horne was so overwhelmingly dominant. Horne took four fours from Michael Mason in the fifth over to go from 26 to 50 and continued to sprint unfettered by the restraints that slowed other batsmen.

As a measure of his strokeplay, his audacity, his last 11 scoring shots were boundaries.

Once Auckland's momentum had slowed, it became Howell or any other batsman to recover it. They lurched into the last 10 overs of their innings still needing more than 50 runs to win with five wickets standing. It would have been unthinkable at one point that Auckland might have lost and yet that possibility arose.

Howell saw them home. He grafted through those last 10 overs, through the last five when Auckland needed 25 runs, against tightened bowling and eager fielding, and he saw them narrowly home.

That Auckland were presented with a total which finally tested them was due in large part to Ben Smith's innings of 83 from 103 balls for Central. That was the heart of their innings after they had lost the toss and batted.

He batted 147 minutes and hit four fours and three sixes but his was a one-day innings of intelligence and quality and far more important than those boundaries were the 35 runs he took from singles.

Central put on 32 runs for the loss of two wickets before Smith came to the wicket and added 50 runs for four wickets after he had gone. He came to the wicket when Central were 32/2 and left them 207/5.

Sulzberger's 43 from 37 balls and Richard King's 31 from 54 balls were the other innings of note.

© CricInfo