Sabin keeps faith with his young guns despite setback

Banbury will be looking to get back on track when they entertain Slough in Saturday’s Home Counties Premier Cricket League fixture.

Sabin is confident his young side are up to the challenge at this level and said: “We haven’t got the experience of recent seasons but all of these young players have got the ability. It’s down to them to prove themselves but there is no added pressure on them.

“We’re a real team and I’ve got confidence in all the players so we’ll go again on Saturday. I don’t know much about Slough this year but they’re always a decent side.

“We’ve just got to make sure we turn up on Saturday, take responsibility and put in a positive performance. The format has changed but we’ll still be going for the win.”

Looking back on Saturday’s defeat against Burnham, Sabin added: “We didn’t turn up at Great & Little Tew but, even though we lost against Burnham, I was happy with the performance.

“We got off to such a slow start and that put pressure on the middle order to score runs when they came in. In the end they did well to get us up towards 180 which was a decent score from where we were.

“We were unfortunate not to capture a couple of early wickets but in the end Burnham knocked the runs off quite comfortably.”

But enforced changes will not help for Saturday’s division one clash. Richard West returns but Banbury will be without Ollie Clarke, Jamie Curtis and wicket keeper Will Hawtin so Ed Phillips will keep wicket despite having not played a game so far.

Either Tom Bartlett and Justin Lambden, who both got big knocks in the second XI fixture with Tiddington, would be in line to step up but they are also unavailable so Jack Lambden will make his first team debut.