CRICKET: Batting fear won't bring House down

8:43am Thursday 1st May 2008

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SURVIVAL is the buzz word around the Nationwide House pavilion this spring as Mark Flay's men look to avoid becoming embroiled in another relegation battle at the foot of the Wiltshire Division.

Nationwide found life difficult last summer in their first season in the West of England Premier League, but a strong run of results saw them haul themselves off the bottom of the table in the closing weeks.

In the end, no team was relegated due to movements up and down in the Glos/Wilts Division, but Nationwide know they cannot afford to leave things to chance this time around.

"Our main aim this season will be to try and maintain our status," said club press officer Danny Seaton.

"It took a mammoth effort last year to drag ourselves off the bottom and we don't want to go through that again.

"But it was the club's first season at that level so we were just happy to stay up in the end."

Nationwide have lost opening batsman Mark Vincent to Wootton Bassett, and with no new additions to their squad could find the going equally tough in 2008.

Seaton has identified the batting as an area of weakness, and admits the players must learn from their mistakes last time around.

He said: "Losing Mark to Bassett is a blow because he scored some valuable runs at the top of the order for us.

"Generally it was the batting that let us down last year.

"Whenever we lost a couple of wickets more seemed to follow and we cannot let the collapses happen again.

"We need one or two batsmen to make some big scores. One or two made 50s last season, but nobody really pushed on.

"Everyone is going to have to knuckle down and try to learn from the lessons of last season.

"If we do that it could be a good year."

FIRST MATCH: Saturday, Malmesbury (a) ONE TO WATCH: Jonny Clarke. Top order batsman who accumulates runs quickly and is fast between the wickets. Nationwide will look to Clarke to steer them towards some bigger scores this summer.