BRISBANE, Feb 27 AAP – Victoria watched Queensland squirm out of another Gabba headlock today as Clinton Perren continued his excellent summer with a century in the Pura Cup match.

Michael Crutcher27-Feb-2003BRISBANE, Feb 27 AAP – Victoria watched Queensland squirm out of another Gabba headlock today as Clinton Perren continued his excellent summer with a century in the Pura Cup match.The Victorians were rejoicing this morning when the Bulls fell to 3-17 in tricky batting conditions but they weren’t smiling when rain forced umpires to call stumps with 24 overs remaining.By then, Queensland was 6-231 in its first innings with Perren unbeaten on 117, pushing his first-class average this season to 88.4.With Wade Seccombe (40) and captain Martin Love (30) chipping in, the competition leaders squeezed plenty of runs from a lively Gabba wicket which isn’t expected to settle with showers forecast for the next two days.”The scoring was difficult out there and it was pretty hard to hit,” Perren said.”You could play a couple of nice shots and feel comfortable and then you would miss a ball which moved a couple of inches and look like a goose.”You had to be prepared to look ugly.”There wasn’t too much wrong with Perren’s knock, which followed his double century against South Australia in his most recent Gabba innings.The 28-year-old played and missed plenty of times but he showed enough discipline to crunch 15 boundaries in a valuable lesson for the nervous Victorian batsmen.The Bushrangers don’t like playing at the Gabba – failing to win a match in almost 20 years – and they won’t be awake early tomorrow in anticipation of facing the likes of Queensland swing bowler Adam Dale in overcast conditions.”The faster bowlers seemed to skid through but those guys who were just a little slower seemed to be the most difficult,” Perren said.”They definitely got frustrated – you could tell that with some of their field placings they thought we had too many runs on the board.”But they were right to win the toss and bowl – it was the only choice.”The day began poorly for the Bulls when opener Daniel Payne was dismissed from the fifth ball by Shane Harwood (1-44), nudging a catch to leg gully.But Payne was probably glad to go because the third ball of the match struck his elbow and the next hit his chest.Mathew Inness (2-41) claimed the next two wickets and the Bulls were again in trouble at 5-89 after Jon Moss (2-34) claimed Love and James Hopes (zero) within three balls.Perren led the revival with Seccombe in a 105-run stand which clearly didn’t impress the Bushrangers.They stood in apparent disbelief when Seccombe was given not out following a loud appeal for a catch behind but the Bulls wicketkeeper had already done enough damage.Earlier, Love became the first Australian batsman to pass 1,000 first-class runs for the summer when he edged to 15 but the Test player was out not long after to a catch by Jason Arnberger at short leg.