The man known to his mates as 'Cheesy' left the Bellerive Oval here in Hobart today with a smile that befitted the tag. Just as he did in the game between the two states in Melbourne last year, Victoria's Jason Arnberger (161*) batted through the entirety of a day's play to lead his team into a strong position by stumps on the opening day of the Pura Cup match against Tasmania.

Not even the players' bizarre departure to an early tea break - as one bullocking Arnberger pull shot rendered the ball irretrievable for fifteen minutes - offered the home team a genuinely lasting reprieve. As balls crashed serially into boundary hoardings and promotional billboards, so a struggling Tasmania effectively hit the wall.

By the close, Victoria had reached a mark of 3/290 on a green-tinged pitch that certainly should have made high scoring a more difficult task than the Tigers let it become.

One of the sides had entered the match with no hope left of making this season's Pura Cup Final; the other with all of that and possibly more before it. And, from early in the day, it wasn't difficult to discern which team was which.

The six hours of play emphatically belonged to Arnberger, though it should be said that fellow batsmen Matthew Elliott (54) and Michael Klinger (36*) also enjoyed themselves. With Elliott, the doughty right hander added 123 runs in a fine partnership at the start of the day before joining with Klinger to assemble an unbroken fourth wicket stand of 118 at the end.

Arnberger has come of age over the last two years, matching a 753 run haul to this stage of the 2000-01 first-class summer with the 869 that came in the preceding season. Today, he illustrated the reasons why as his powers of concentration, his measured defence and his crunching strokeplay came together in a lovely mixture of an innings.

"He's had (another) great season," said his captain, Paul Reiffel, shortly after stumps were drawn.

"In every season that he's played with us since coming down from New South Wales, he's just got better and better. He's worked really hard, he's a great team man and all the boys are really happy for him because he really deserves this."

The only disruption to his hand came in a bizarre few moments late in the post-lunch session. Arnberger had been strolling effortlessly toward his mountainous score by that stage and had just crashed an Andrew Downton (2/47) delivery high over backward square leg. Like a tennis ball attaching itself to a net, the ball not only slammed hard into a promotional sign beyond the ground's eastern boundary but found its resting place there too, neatly lodging itself in the side of the billboard which, fittingly, promotes Tasmania's status as an idyllic destination for visitors.

This forced the players to the interval nine minutes before the scheduled stoppage time, the breather representing a more than welcome break for the listless-looking Tigers. It proved to be about the hosts' only reprieve at Arnberger's hands. The ball was ultimately recovered as Peter Apps' groundstaff set about finding the nearest ladder in the ground and it was attacked just as ferociously by Arnberger when it was pressed back into service.

Twice, his ability to establish early command over the game was threatened. Twice, he responded beautifully.

The first hurdle came as rival captain Jamie Cox invited the Victorians to bat first on a green-tinged pitch that might have offered much in the way of early life if Arnberger had not been close to the top of his game and if the Tasmanians had not been quite as ragged with their line with the new ball.

The second came later in the day when a fine spell from left arm paceman Downton netted the wickets of Matthew Mott (20) and Brad Hodge (3), generated a succession of early lbw appeals against Klinger, and finally had the pitch showing that it was clearly not as batsman-friendly as stereotypical assumptions about Bellerive often tend to imply.

"It was a bit moist and we thought it might probably do a little bit," said Reiffel of the pitch.

"But the boys were really positive and disciplined and played well. We got off to a great start and that's put us into a good position."

Reiffel seemed a little unsure by the close as to how long his team should bat on tomorrow and how it might best launch its bid for the outright points that it needs if it is to conceivably vault past Queensland and into top place on the Pura Cup standings by the end of this match. He said that those decisions will await a collective discussion in the morning and will, naturally, depend on how well his batsmen play on the resumption.

But, if the team as a whole continues to play as well as Arnberger did today, then there shouldn't be too many problems.

© 2001 CricInfo Ltd