CAPTAIN Jake Wakelin wants to see Witham Cricket Club consolidate their place in the Marshall Hatchick Two Counties Championship’s top flight with positive displays in the next two weeks.

It has been a season of ups and downs for Witham, who have faced a season of rebuilding, and with four games remaining, they know there is still work to do to safeguard their position in division one - continuing at home against Worlington on Saturday.

A seven-run defeat at Mistley last weekend left them still glancing over their shoulders at the relegation scrap going on below them and with three sides likely to go down, Wakelin knows there can be no complacency from his team.

So he is looking for a return to winning ways when Worlington make a visit to the Park.

He said: “We want to guarantee our safety now.

“We can’t let it go now as we have only lost twice since the midpoint of the season.

“We have Worlington coming to our place, which will be an advantage to us and we feel we can beat anyone in the league so it’s a massive chance for us to get another win to help consolidate our position.

“We are 25 to 30 points above the sides in the bottom three at the moment and there are only 80 points left to play for so another win or two would mean sides in the bottom three would have to effectively win all their games to catch us.

“Ideally we want to win the next two to really guarantee our safety, but I’m not really worried as I know that if we play to our best, then we can beat any side in this league.

“I see no reason why we can’t get the win against Worlington to consolidate our position.”

Wakelin said he expected Matt Anderson and Matt McKendry to be unavailable for the visit of Worlington, but added that James Suett and Jack Sambrook would return.

However, the Witham skipper knows his side will have to bat better than they did against Mistley last weekend.

Wakelin was pleased as his side kept the Swans restricted to 211 for eight from their 50 overs, but was disappointed that it was a total that they were unable to chase down.

He said: “It was quite a disappointing result really.

“I think the batsmen let themselves down.

“We lost by seven runs so it was fine margins, but it was disappointing to lose after keeping Mistley down to a decent score to chase.

“Things like that are a learning curve for us.

“We have had to rebuild this year and people will learn from it, but I think we let ourselves down with the bat.”