Northern Districts will be praying for the skies to clear as their chances of pulling off an unlikely Plunket Shield victory continue to cloud over.

Rain across the Bay of Plenty overnight and this morning means a ball is yet to be bowled on day two of the Knights' final round clash with the Canterbury Wizards at Mount Maunganui's Bay Oval.

Northen Knights and Bay of Plenty batsman Bharat Popli on his way to 51 against the Canterbury Wizards. Photo: Bruce Barnard.

At stumps on day one, the Knights had taken three wickets for 76 following their declaration of 256-8 after just 73.5 overs in their first innings.

The Knights need an outright win over the visitors to have any chance of taking their first Shield title since 2011/12, but remain on edge as Canterbury can't pick up too many first-innings points.

On the opening day, defending champions Wizards gained three first-innings bowling points, and the Knights just the solitary batting one, increasing the former's lead over their opponents to 15 points.

It leaves the Knights needing to bowl their more favoured opponents for less than 250 to keep their title hopes alive.

Under blue skies, Wizard's skipper Peter Fulton won the toss and put the Knights into bat minus test wicketkeeper BJ Watling and former test batsmen Daniel Flynn and Dean Brownlie.

In their place were Bay of Plenty batsman Bharat Popli, Tim Seifert and seamer Cody Andrews.

After openers Brad Wilson and Joe Carter fell early within 12 overs, Popli added some starch with a composed half-century. But shortly after bringing up his second first-class 50, he was gone for 51 off 99 balls.

Stand-in skipper Anton Devcich anchored the innings with a 68, adding 90 alongside Mitchell Santner (44 off 67 balls) for the fifth wicket, before being trapped LBW by Todd Astle in the 59th over.

Declaring late in the day, Knights veteran seamer Graeme Aldridge took two quick wickets to reduce Canterbury to 4-2 in reply and Cameron Fletcher and Fulton back in the pavilion.

At stumps Neil Broom and Henry Nicholls were at the crease on 36 and 20 respectively.

In the other final round matches, the Otago Volts made 355-9 at Colin Maiden Park against the Auckland Aces while the Central Stags are 70/2 chasing Wellington Firebirds' first innings 227.