Leinster Lightning showed all the qualities of champions to bat out the final day of the inter-provincial championship match against the Northern Knights for a draw.

The Knights started the day needing 11 wickets to claim a third victory of the season over the international-studded Lightning side but could manage only nine, one falling in the final session.

Andrew Poynter, the batsman in form, led the fight back after they surrendered a first innings deficit of 276 with his second century in five days. Following his unbeaten 102 in the Irish Cup final, he was just as commanding with a boundary-laden (21) innings of 113 in 163 balls. Then after captain John Mooney was caught at short leg for a first-ball duck, Tyrone Kane came in and saw off another 144 balls for 49 patient runs.

When the eighth wicket partnership of 104 was ended by Lee Nelson's first ball of the match, Max Sorensen wasn't quite so patient, hitting 36 off 40 balls, but by then the game had been saved and Mooney did not have the embarrassment of receiving the championship trophy from Cricket Ireland president Robin Walsh after a defeat.

As expected, spin was always going to be the Knights route to victory and James Cameron-Dow with five wickets in the innings and eight in the match, from a marathon 69 overs, could not have done much more.

It was Andrew White who took the last first innings wicket after 40 minutes of defiance from Ben Ackland, who fell 13 short of a deserved century.

When Lightning lost three wickets for six runs to slump to 163 for seven, 40 minutes before tea, it looked odds on a Knights victory but after two days in the field, the last proved a session too far for a tiring attack.