WITH the weather having washed out their last two games, Braintree Cricket Club captain Will Jackson admits that time is running out for his team to safeguard their place in division one of the Marshall Hatchick Two Counties Championship.

Having failed to finish their game against Halstead the week before, wet weather also caused an abandonment of Braintree's fixture at Maldon last weekend, robbing them of the chance to pick up valuable points from a fixture where they felt they could claim victory.

The call-offs have left Braintree rock bottom, with seven games to save themselves.

With three sides possibly being relegated this year and fourth from bottom Worlington - who they are due to host on Saturday - sitting 44 points above them, Jackson knows wins have to come sooner rather than later.

He said: "The last two washouts have not helped us as they were both games that we thought were winnable and we were looking to take maximum points from them.

"You can't help the weather, but we have to put wins on the board now.

"We have Worlington this weekend and we need a win to close the gap.

"Bury are bottom of the East Anglian Premier League (the league above) and look like they could come down so that could mean three sides go down from our league and we'll have to finish fourth from bottom to be safe.

"It's not mathematically impossible, but if we lose to Worlington then we'd really be cut adrift.

"I think we need to win five or the seven games we have left but we should be confident as we have only been blown away twice this year and other games have been lost by the smallest of margins.

"Last year we were coming down on the right side of them, but that hasn't been the case so far this year and hopefully we can change that now."

Jackson said spinner Barry Stephens would be available for the game against Worlington and opening batsman Dean Bass may return from a knee injury.