Henriques 164*, Cummins four-for hand NSW slim win

New South Wales 6 for 328 (Henriques 164*, Patterson 79) beat Cricket Australia XI 6 for 324 (Gibson 97, Bosisto 75, Inglis 54, Cummins 4-70) by four runs
Scorecard

Pat Cummins' pace came to the rescue for New South Wales as the Blues squeaked past the Cricket Australia XI in a high-scoring Matador Cup affair at Hurstville Oval.

After Moises Henriques blasted his way to an unbeaten 164 from 135 balls, with handy support from Kurtis Patterson, NSW seemed well placed to defend 328 against the youthful CA XI, who have only won one match in the competition over two seasons.

However, a sensible stand of 141 between the NSW-based Ryan Gibson and the CA XI captain Will Bosisto put the emergent team in strong position to challenge at 2 for 243 in the 42nd over.

That was when Cummins intervened in his first match since returning from the latest of a string of injuries dating back to his Test debut for Australia at the Wanderers as far back as 2011. Cummins snared Gibson, Bosisto and Sam Harper in the space of eight balls to tilt the match towards NSW.

Even then, the CA XI fought on, and in the end they fell just four runs short of a major upset, making 14 of the 19 runs they needed from Gurinder Sandhu's final over.

Another NSW product, the spinner Arjun Nair, had earlier impressed by returning figures of 2 for 53 against his state squad team-mates.