Ex­pe­ri­enced T&T mid­dle-or­der bats­man Ja­son Mo­hammed stole the spot­light as the Pow­er­gen leg­end added 90 runs to his overnight tal­ly of 134 to com­plete a dou­ble hun­dred on Sat­ur­day.

This is as South post­ed over 500 runs to be in con­trol of the Na­mal­co North-South Clas­sic at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do.

The North bowlers toiled in the sun at first, then the flood­lights as South bat­ted all of day three to close the day with a healthy 206-run lead.

South re­sumed their overnight in­nings on 273 for 3 with Mo­hammed on 134 and Jyd Goolie on 24. They added a fur­ther 112 runs be­fore Goolie was bowled by Isa­iah ‘Big Raj’ Ra­jah for 56 which in­clud­ed eight fours.

Crys­t­ian Thur­ton then joined Mo­hammed and to­geth­er they put on an­oth­er 27 runs be­fore Mo­hammed’s marathon knock fi­nal­ly came to an end on 224, in­clu­sive of 26 fours and three six­es and spanned 324 balls. Philton Williams in­duced the edge of Mo­hammed’s bat for one of An­to­nio Gomez’s four catch­es as the young glove­man is in di­rect com­pe­ti­tion with Daniel Williams to stand be­hind the stumps against Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges at month’s end.

Sha­trughan Ram­baran made just three, falling to the Gomez-Williams com­bi­na­tion be­fore a part­ner­ship of 105 be­tween Thur­ton and Daniel Williams took the score from 424 for 6 to 539 for 7.

Thur­ton, who was at the cen­tre of con­tro­ver­sy when he was not in­volved in the tri­al match­es for the Red Force for last year’s Su­per 50, left no doubt this time around about his will­ing­ness and readi­ness to play, with a handy 69 that on­ly came to an end when Tion Web­ster forced him to edge to Gomez. Thur­ton had count­ed three fours in his in­nings.

Williams did him­self a huge favour for a Red Force se­lec­tion with 56 in­clud­ing five fours but was trapped in front of the stumps to a Khary Pierre de­liv­ery.

At stumps, South closed on 552 for 6, a lead of 206 runs.

Sum­marised scores

North 346 (90 overs) (An­drew Ram­baran 84; Joshua James 59; Justin Man­ick 5-74; Aa­di­an Racha 2-58) vs South 552/8 (169 overs) (Ja­son Mo­hammed 224; Cephas Coop­er 98; Philton Wil­iams 3-84; Tion Web­ster 2-73).