Captain Jake Wakelin will not let his Witham Cricket Club team get ahead of themselves in the race for the Marshall Hatchick Two Counties Championship division one title.

Last weekend proved to be a particularly good one for third-placed Witham as the top two teams – Wivenhoe and Mildenhall – lost while a superb run chase saw Wakelin’s side win by seven wickets at Haverhill.

Quick-fire centuries for the skipper and Adrian Chad allowed Witham to chase down the hosts’ total 283 with five overs to spare and brought them right back into the heart of the title race.

But Wakelin insists that, with nine games still to go, starting with Saturday’s home game against Halstead, they cannot think beyond the next fixture.

He said: “It looks simple and if we win all of our remaining games then we should really win the league, but we’re not saying that and we just want to take it one game at a time.

“The focus has to be there game after game as each team is a threat.

“Halstead have some good batsmen so early wickets could be very important and we can’t take them or anyone else for granted.

“I’ve always said that anyone can beat anyone in this league, but we back ourselves and if we keep our form going with the bat and keep taking wickets then we will put ourselves in a strong position.

“I have no doubts about the talent in our side.

Wakelin said he expected Jack Sambrook and Michael Glynn to be available again for the game against Halstead, but Simon Jones was set to be missing.

They will be looking for a similar result to the one at Haverhill, but Wakelin is hoping for a stronger performance in the field.

He felt there were mistakes made as the hosts were allowed to set a stern target, but a tremendous run chase, led by a 105 from the captain and a 139 by Chad, saw them comfortably home.

Wakeling added: “It was a good result but not one that looked likely after the first 50 overs.

“We felt their score was a bit above par as we bowled and fielded pretty poorly to be honest.

“However, we managed to peg them back in the last 10 to 15 overs to make sure they stayed below 300 and that was quite positive as it picked us up for the run chase.

“We know what we can do with our batting and we believe we can chase down scores like that, but for myself and Adrian Chad to get hundreds like that - and as quickly as we did - was excellent.

“Chasing down 283 with five overs to spare is pretty good going and it’s a result that has opened up the league nicely for us.

“I think if you’d looked at scores across the league after 50 overs, we’d probably have looked the most likely to lose as other teams looked in good positions, but we have a never say die attitude at Witham.”