Now they are used to the winning feeling, Halstead Cricket Club captain Josh Wells wants his team to push on up the Marshall Hatchick Two Counties Championship division one table.

A run of five defeats in the early part of the season did little to help Halstead’s bid to re-establish themselves in the top flight this year, but a resounding 154-run win against Maldon last weekend was their second success in a row.

And with their confidence now firmly in place, Wells wants his players to continue building, starting with tomorrow’s game against rock-bottom Elmstead Grasshoppers at Star Stile.

He said: “It was a fantastic result against Maldon – it was a really top performance “Everywhere, it was spot on.

“Getting 260 was always going to be difficult for them to chase and we then bowled and fielded well to get them all out for just over a hundred.

“It was by far the best we have seen in the field this year and hopefully we can build on it.

“When we lost the five games in a row, four of them were against sides who are now the top four in the league, so confidence never really went, but now we’ve put a few wins together, you can really see it’s there across everyone.

“You can see people are getting used to winning and we’re looking to get a block of wins together now.

“We knew that once we got one win then we could get three, four and even more so hopefully we can now keep it going.”

Wells said he expected a largely unchanged side for the game against Elmstead Grasshoppers, with Sam Walter being the only one from the side that faced Maldon to be unavailable.