CAN­BER­RA, Aus­tralia, – Fast bowler Alzarri Joseph’s late three-wick­et burst with the sec­ond new ball hauled West In­dies back in­to con­tention af­ter a trio of half-cen­turies had threat­ened to give the Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter’s XI com­plete con­trol on day one of the four-day first class tour match Wednes­day.

The hosts were march­ing along at 278 for six in the fi­nal ses­sion be­fore Joseph (3-52) in­ter­vened with a sharp spell to send the last three wick­ets tum­bling for 19 runs in the space of 39 balls un­der lights at Manu­ka Oval.

At the close, the Prime Min­is­ter’s XI were 297 for nine, a to­tal built on half-cen­turies from Matt Ren­shaw (81), Mar­cus Har­ris (73) and Pe­ter Hand­scomb (55).

“I think this game is a game of pa­tience. You nev­er know, you can bowl well in [a] ses­sion but you have to stay pa­tient and your re­ward may come at the end of the game,” Joseph said af­ter­wards.

“There was just a lit­tle change of plan, just try­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent to try and slow the scor­ing down and un­set­tle the bats­men.”

His fire­works were re­quired af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter’s XI got away to a fly­ing start, Ren­shaw and Har­ris putting on a rol­lick­ing 134 for the first wick­et to dom­i­nate ear­ly.

Ren­shaw, a 26-year-old left-han­der who played the last of his 11 Tests four years ago, count­ed 10 fours in a 168-ball knock while Har­ris, a 30-year-old left-han­der who suit­ed up in a Test as re­cent­ly as Jan­u­ary, faced 124 balls and struck 13 fours.

They car­ried their side to the first break at 93 with­out loss and ex­tend­ed their dom­i­na­tion fol­low­ing the re­sump­tion be­fore pac­er Jay­den Seales got the break­through when he had Har­ris caught at first slip by Kyle May­ers.

Ren­shaw added 28 for the sec­ond wick­et with Hen­ry Hunt (13) and an­oth­er 28 for the third with Hand­scomb be­fore fi­nal­ly de­part­ing at 190 for three, flirt­ing with a wide de­liv­ery from left-arm seam­er Ray­mon Reifer and feath­er­ing a catch be­hind.

Vet­er­an seam­er Ke­mar Roach quick­ly re­moved cap­tain Josh In­glis with­out scor­ing to a jug­gling catch at first slip by sub­sti­tute Ja­son Hold­er but the Prime Min­is­ter’s XI re­cov­ered through a 48-run, fifth wick­et part­ner­ship be­tween Hand­scomb and Aaron Hardie (23).

Off-spin­ner Ros­ton Chase (2-72) ac­count­ed for both even­tu­al­ly, first rat­tling Hardie’s stumps with one that spun back sharply and then hav­ing Hand­scomb stumped in his very next over, af­ter the right-han­der faced 86 balls and struck sev­en fours.

Joseph then took cen­tre stage, clean bowl­ing Michael Neser (10) as the right-han­der missed a dri­ve, york­ing Joel Paris (2) be­fore get­ting Ash­ton Agar to play on for 33, to what proved to be the day’s fi­nal de­liv­ery.

CMC

Scores:

PM’s XI 297 for nine (Matt Ren­shaw 81, Mar­cus Har­ris 73, Pe­ter Hand­scomb 55, Ash­ton Agar 33; Alzarri Joseph 3-52, Ros­ton Chase 2-72) vs WEST IN­DIES