Tasmania and South Australia are the two states with the smallest populations in Australia and they're also often depicted as possessing two of the more unfancied teams among the six that are drawn together in Pura Cup competition.

Yet, as they watched the Tigers defiantly plot their way to a mark of 5/236 by stumps, the few people on hand at the Bellerive Oval in Hobart for the opening day of this match could barely have wished for a more earnest struggle.

The South Australians started well, securing an important victory at the toss and gaining first use of a green-tinged pitch that offered plenty of assistance to the bowlers. They claimed their first wicket just three deliveries into the match and there were another four to come before the total had even surpassed 122.

But Tasmania, having started far more slowly, finished far more impressively.

Without their three front-line members in Jason Gillespie, Paul Wilson and Brett Swain, it has to be said that the Redbacks' attack produced a manful performance.

Left armer Mark Harrity (2/50) was especially impressive early, even looking like the uncompromising firebrand of a few years ago when he peppered former state teammate Daniel Marsh (26) with a brace of superbly aimed short deliveries after lunch. And fellow paceman Paul Rofe (1/58) also bowled well, albeit that his end-of-day figures didn't entirely reflect the consistency of his line and length.

It was Harrity who made the opening breakthrough by dispatching Dene Hills (0), and he later claimed the most prized Tasmanian wicket of all when he tempted Jamie Cox (35) into mistiming a leg glance and feathering a catch to wicketkeeper Graham Manou.

He was also a prime factor in consigning Tasmania to potentially desperate peril at 2/10, by which point Hills and Michael Dighton (6) had already edged deliveries into the slips.

Cox, Shane Watson (32) and Marsh worked grimly to restore the situation on a pitch offering the variability in bounce and consistent seam movement that its green hue had suggested it might.

But the innings then threatened to unravel for a second time when the trio perished in relatively quick succession in the middle session.

Such an outlook didn't figure on a sterling unbeaten association of 114 runs for the sixth wicket between two left handers of differing builds and at differing ends of their careers, though. Shaun Young (66*) and Sean Clingeleffer (55*) were joined shortly before tea but were still unparted by stumps, having based their liaison upon sensible accumulation, discerning punishment of bad deliveries and equally prudent running between the wickets.

Young is already an adept hand at foiling opposition attacks and Clingeleffer, a wicketkeeper-batsman of such immense promise that his future Test prospects are already being talked up in Tasmania, showed he is rapidly coming to grips with the same art. Accordingly, theirs was a partnership that provided gross frustration for the Redbacks.

More insult was added by the notion that an already lengthy South Australian injury list was extended to include a new casualty in Ryan Harris. After bowling less than ten overs on his first-class debut, Harris (2/26) strained a pectoral muscle and was forced from the field. Doubt already surrounds his capacity to bowl again tomorrow.

© 2001 CricInfo Ltd