Xavier Doherty bagged three wickets as Tasmania bowled NSW out for 264 to take first innings points in the Sheffield Shield match against NSW at Bellerive.

The miserly Australian one-day left-armer finished with the impressive figures of 3-37 as the Tigers took a 90-run lead into the second innings on a dying pitch.

At lunch on day three, the home side were 0-9 in their second dig with Jordan Silk unbeaten on eight and Mark Cosgrove one.

Doherty entered the Shield round as the competition’s fourth leading wicket taker with 16 at just 22.68 as he reaps the rewards of the summer’s drier pitches.

He grabbed two scalps on Sunday morning to help mop up the Blues’ wagging tail, a brilliant caught and bowled to remove Trent Copeland (58) and a delivery that rattled last-man out Gurinder Sandhu’s (5) stumps.

Doherty was ably assisted by medium pacer Evan Gulbis, who grabbed 3-78.

Former Test paceman Copeland made a pitch for allrounder status with his side’s top score while Kurtis Patterson, who became the youngest player to make a Shield hundred two years ago, made 54 in his fourth first class match.

The Tigers struggled to put the foot of the throat of their opponents without injured former Test paceman Ben Hilfenhaus (side strain) after they had the Blues 5-102 on day two.

Resuming at 5-200 on Sunday, Copeland and Patterson’s 102-run partnership was quickly ended when the 20-year-old was trapped lbw by Gulbis at 6-204.

It was 7-215 when Doherty removed Copeland and 8-242 when Steve O’Keefe was bowled by Luke Butterworth (2-71).

Sean Abbott (33) struck two sixes in a Butterworth over but became Gulbis’s third victim at 9-262 before Sandhu’s dismissal.

Shield champs the Tigers can leapfrog the ladder-leading Blues with an outright win.