Halstead Cricket Club captain Josh Wells feels his team can get back to winning ways this weekend after a spell without a victory in Marshall Hatchick Two Counties Championship division one.

A 109-run defeat at leaders Mildenhall last weekend means Halstead haven’t won in the top flight since the end of May, but two recent games have been rained off in that time and Wells says no heads have dropped at Star Stile as his players remain confident of a strong second-half to the season.

He said: “It does feel like a long time since we last won, but having lost a couple of games to the weather, it somehow doesn’t feel too bad.

“Our heads certainly aren’t down by a long stretch and we have a game against Frinton (seconds) to look forward to today.

“We bowled them out for 66 in the second week of the season so we see it as a winnable one.

“I don’t think we are looking over our shoulder at all at the sides below us as we know deep down that we are good enough to be comfortable in this division and Continued on page 31 we are still quietly confident.”

Wells said he expected Charlie Douglas-Hughes to return for today’s game at Star Stile and either Freddie Statham or Wajahat Bukhari to also come into the side, while Chris Roper is unavailable and Goush Raviendran is likely to move into the seconds.

Halstead will be keen to bounce back after a difficult game at division one leaders Mildenhall last weekend, but Wells felt there were positives for his team.

Mildenhall were quickly out of the traps and their early scoring meant a total well in excess of 300 was looking likely, so the Halstead skipper was pleased to see his bowlers regain control and some good fielding restricted the hosts to 263 for eight.

It was a target Halstead felt they could chase, however, wickets falling regularly didn’t allow them to get closer than the 154 all out they achieved, despite a half-century from Harry Veal and Wells making 41.

The captain added: “It was disappointing, but you have to say they just outplayed us.

“They started at a great pace and were scoring ten an over in the early stages to really put us behind at drinks, but we did really well to get back into it and pegged them back to less than 270 on what was a really good pitch.

“Their top four are all up there with the best players in the league and it’s tough to keep them down when they are going hard, so we were pleased with how we did in the latter part of their innings.

“We felt it was a par score, but we never really got any momentum going in our reply and we kept losing wickets in clusters.

“Harry Veal played well and I was pleased to get a bit of a score, but wickets going down every 20 runs or so meant we just couldn’t get going.

“There were positives to take, though, as we fielded well without many mistakes and we did well to pull them back when they could have got to 350, so they are things we can take into the game against Frinton.”