Witham Cricket Club skipper Jake Wakelin says his team are facing mini cup finals every week as the race for the Marshall Hatchick Two Counties Championship title keeps hotting up.

Sam Cooper’s “faultless” century formed the bedrock of Witham’s successful run chase against Hadleigh as Witham stayed close on the heels of division one’s leading pair – Sudbury and Mildenhall.

And with Wakelin’s third-placed team still to play both of the top two, they know the title is still up for grabs, but the Witham skipper just wants his players to keep playing in the way that has brought them success so far.

“For any of the top three teams, it’s in their own hands,” said Wakelin.

“If Sudbury, Mildenhall or ourselves win all of our games, then we know we could win the league.

“I’m sure the other two have put plans in place for promotion (to the East Anglian Premier League) and they are very good sides, but we have good players and we’re not going to roll over and go away now.

“We just want to keep enjoying our cricket and it’s going to be like having mini cup finals every week for us.

“I don’t think we could have dreamed that we’d be in this position at the start of the season, but our confidence is sky-high at the moment.

“There are eight games left and I’m sure all three of us will lose at least one game between now and the end of the season because it’s such a tight league.

“However, there’s no reason why, if we keep playing good cricket, we can’t keep pushing.

“I’m just very proud of the boys.”

Witham are due to continue with a trip to Halstead on today, but Wakelin said Simon Jones, James Suett and Paul Bellehewe may all be unavailable.

He added: “We’ll have people who can’t play for the next couple of weeks, but like every time that has happened this year, we’ll have people who can come in and have done really well when they’ve been asked to step up.”