Bathurst Orange Inter District Cricket: Centennials Bulls' Blake Aubin hits first century of 2020-21 season

Aubin notched up an unbeaten 123 as he helped the Bulls claim a draw in their opening two-day clash of the competition, hitting 17 fours and a pair of sixes.

He arrived at the crease with Bulls sitting on 2-24 early in Saturday's play, but with the team still eager to try and chase down Colts' total of 296.

And with the way Aubin started his innings that was looking like a realistic prospect.

However, Aubin had to dial back those ambitions shortly after bringing up triple figures and opted to play for the draw.

Together in an unbeaten 87 run partnership with Ethan Muller (44 not out), Aubin showed that he was also capable of being a defensive rock when required.

Bulls finished the day at 6-234 to split the points.

Aubin's score builds onto what's been an excellent individual start to the season, in which he scored 66 runs on two separate occasions across BOIDC first grade and Royal Hotel Cup games.

"When you're seeing the ball quite well and then you have to revert to being defensive it can be hard, because you don't want to get bogged down in those situations, but I really enjoyed the battle, especially against their opening pair," Aubin said.

"I just want to keep playing at the highest level against some of the best bowlers in the region. It's an awesome challenge."

Despite falling short of victory Aubin said the attacking intent from the Bulls was great to see.

"At the start of the innings we had a group discussion to see if we wanted to try and get a result out of it, and seeing where we were on the ladder we wanted to try and go for the win," he said.

"We did that for probably 40 overs before we thought we better play for the draw, which we still had to bat an hour for, and Ethan Muller was really solid over that time which was great to see from one of our up and coming juniors.

"Colts bowled really well. It's a hard field to bowl on and they did quite well to keep it tight, particularly at the start when we were trying to get on top of them. That probably set up their innings for the draw. It was a good battle."

Earlier in the day Russ Gardner (80) came up short of the century for Colts while Matt Stephen's (50 not out) unbeaten half century batting at number 10 proved vital.

Tyler Horton (2-47) was the best of the bowlers for Centennials Bulls while Dave Henderson (2-31) led the way for Colts.