PURTON skipper Tom Whittaker has warned local rivals Swindon that his side will be ready for anything they might face ahead of the two sides’ WEPL Wiltshire derby clash on Saturday.

Whittaker’s side put in a strong bowling performance to beat Hinton Charterhouse by three wickets last weekend as Conor Cleary and Adam Woolford took seven wickets between them, before Elijah Samuel’s brilliant hundred set up victory on home turf.

Buoyed by their recent win, Whittaker is confident his side can now compete with a Swindon side that have started the season in excellent form and sit in third in the table thanks to four victories from their opening six fixtures.

With just two wins of their own from the opening half-dozen matches, Purton skipper Whittaker is hoping the occasion of a local derby may help tip the scales back towards his team on Saturday.

He said: “Swindon have had a great start to the season and they’ll be high on confidence as well this weekend.

“It will be a difficult game, but it’s a local derby and anything can happen.

“The boys will definitely be up for it. We’re looking forward to the game

“We’ve got an extremely talented set of young cricketers who are hungry and want to win, so we’ll be ready.”

Whittaker believes his side will have their best shot at emerging victorious if they can restrict Swindon with a tight bowling display – something that has been far stronger as a discipline than their batting this season.

Purton have accumulated just 12 batting points so far this summer and have only passed a total of 150 twice, meaning a high run chase at the County Ground would not suit the visitors on Saturday.

Keen to improve with the bat, Whittaker knows his team’s chances of success will likely rely on bowling Swindon out cheaply.

Whittaker said: “Apart from one blip against Marshfield, Swindon have done really well with the bat this year. It will be a good match up against our bowling.

“We’ve definitely bowled a lot better than we’ve batted so far this season, so that side of the game will be really interesting.

“We need to improve that. It’s such a cliché, but we really need time at the crease. We need people to stick around and bat the overs.

“I don’t think we’ve batted the full 50 overs yet this season, so we’ve got to dig in. When times do get tough out there, we’ve got to play ourselves in and find a way of actually putting runs on the board.

“Until last weekend against Hinton Charterhouse, not a single person in our team had scored a 50, so it was really important that Elijah Samuel showed everyone else it is possible.

“We do have the ability in the team to chase totals down and even set them.”

Elsewhere, Royal Wootton Bassett will look to claim their first win of the season when they play host to Calne.