Ryan Carters’ impressive Sheffield Shield season is continuing as he nears another century for New South Wales at tea on the opening day against Western Australia at the WACA Ground.
NSW were 2-78 and then dominated the day’s middle session helped by some poor WA bowling on a relatively flat wicket with Carters adding 41 in the session to now be 82 not out at tea.
Most of the damage was done by Ben Rohrer who moved from four at lunch to end up falling for 77 just before tea.
Now at the tea interval, NSW are 3-197 with Carters not out on 82 and Kurtis Patterson on four.
Carters has now scored 552 runs this Shield season for the Blues at an average of 69 with a third century for the campaign just 18 runs away for the 23-year-old opener who can also play as a wicket-keeper batsman.
Jason Behrendorff has been the pick of WA’s bowlers with figures of 2-37 but Mitch Marsh, Ryan Duffield and Ashton Agar have all failed to impress or threaten to make breakthroughs.
Earlier, NSW captain Peter Nevill won the toss and elected to bat first in Perth in the crucial Shield match that could see the winner finish the round clear on top of the table.
It was slow going for NSW early on and Nic Maddinson never looked comfortable at the crease.
He was dropped while yet to score and on three, but didn’t capitalise ending up falling for 11 when caught at short-leg by Marsh off Duffield.
NSW were then 2-72 shortly before lunch with Scott Henry gone for 18, but both Carters and Rohrer made batting look easily after the break.
Rohrer was the dominant partner racing to 77 from 108 balls before he played a poor over facing Behrendorff and eventually was out to a bad shot caught behind by Sam Whiteman.
That ended Rohrer and Carters’ 110-run partnership but NSW are still on track for a healthy first innings score.