Recent century-makers Nathan Philip and Sean Harris (55 not out) will resume South Launceston’s chase of Mowbray’s 188 with 3-78 on the board at Invermay Park.

Sisitha Jayasinghe, Nathan Carter and captain Tom Waller all remain in the sheds in a long Knights batting line-up, but none of them hope to face the likes of James Storay and Sam Freeman in the opening session.

“We don’t want to rely on having batters coming in, we want the set batters to really put it on themselves to take us over the line or get us close to that score,” Waller said.

“Harry’s in some good form at the moment so we’d really like him to keep cashing in on that and Nathan’s the same.”

Eagles skipper John LeFevre said his side’s season was on the line.

“It’s a really important day’s cricket for us in the context of our season … I’d say the first half an hour to an hour will be crucial,” LeFevre said.

“Whoever can play the better cricket there and convert on any chances will probably go on to win the game.

“Sean Harris and Nathan Philip are very good batsmen in our competition and both capable of scoring quite quickly when they’re going.

“Sean we thought we bowled a little bit to his strengths last week ... we’ll be trying to home in on the stumps a little bit more and trying to bowl six good balls rather than giving him one boundary ball an over as we tended to do last week.”

LAUNCESTON duo Alistair Taylor and Rowan Smith have a similar task on their hands at Riverside, where another 46 runs are needed to claim first innings points. 

Taylor hopes to reach the 129-run target unscathed and bat on through the day against an attack which has been led well by left-arm swing bowler and deubtant Tom Lewis (2-24).

“Our first goal is to try and knock these runs off and we’ll see what happens from there,” the Lions skipper said.

“We’ll have little goals or something when we go out to bat, but we’ll just take each ball as it comes and try to keep it simple.”

Jack Colgrave replacing Ben Simpson is the sole change to a Blues line-up set on starting the day with a bang. 

“We need to take a couple of early wickets to get us ahead of the game,” Riverside captain Tom Garwood said.

“They might be slightly ahead but two quick wickets can change a lot of things.”