At the NTCA No.2 it was Lions quick Jakeb Morris who picked up Sean Harris, Sisitha Jayasinghe and Ishang Shah to claim 5-46 and help bowl South Launceston out for 199.

Cruising at 2-59, the Knights lost dangermen Harris and Tom Waller in the space of five balls.

When Will Bennett had Cricket North's top run-scorer Nathan Philip caught behind the Knights were 5-97, but Shah had something special up his sleeve.

Having already made two 50s in his first season with the Knights, Shah put on 47 with tailender Jackson Young before getting caught for 93 chasing a hundred.

Bennett and Tom Gray both took two scalps in a bowling effort that pleased Lions captain Alistair Taylor.

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"Losing the toss and bowling on the No.2 you expect a longish day sometimes, but I think we bowled really well to bowl South out for under 200," he said.

"[Morris] toiled hard all day and swung the ball, he thoroughly deserved that. He came to us full-time last year and with another year under the belt he's improving every year.

"It was really good to get Sean and Nathan out cheaply, they're obviously pretty damaging players who can score quickly so to get those two out was key for us."

The Lions reached 3-83 at stumps with round 15 heroes Cam Lynch and Taylor putting on a 51-run stand before the latter became one of two wickets to fall late in the day.

Lynch (38) and Ben Humphrey (3) will return to the crease next week as the Lions chase the win needed to nab an unlikely finals berth.

ELSEWHERE IN SPORT

Things are just as evenly poised at RIVERSIDE where 20 wickets fell for 220 runs.

Batting first at home, the Blues were bowled out for 89 inside 34 overs with only Tom Garwood (39), Ramesh Sundra (15) and no. 11 Sam Artis (17*) passing four.

Jono Chapman, Matthew Battle, Kieren Hume and Liam Ryan all took multiple wickets with the latter taking 3-4 off six overs.

If Westbury's first innings points were assured no-one told Lyndon Stubbs (4-31) or Sam Lockett (5-19), who had the Shamrocks teetering at 6-43 after 17 overs.

A 47-run stand between Jono Chapman (27) and third-gamer Hamish Sytsma (20) got the job done before another slump of 4-6 ended the innings on 96.

Garwood and returning opener James Simpson then blocked out 19 overs for just 35 runs to finish day one with a 28-run lead.

"If we had have got first innings it would have put us into finals but we didn't quite get there," Garwood said.

"That was the plan when we went out to bat to be none down, so then we can have a really good game plan going into next week."