North London cricket captain Sam Bardon is ‘quietly confident’ going into their Middlesex County Cricket League Division Two relegation clash against Eastcote this weekend.

Bardon and his team-mates travel to Eastcote on Saturday and are hoping to lift themselves from the foot of the table.

“I’m quietly confident,” he admitted.

“We managed to beat Eastcote earlier in the season in a fairly tight game.

“We are quite evenly matched teams so it should be an interesting match.”

The skipper believes it will be a good match as both teams will be keen to push themselves away from trouble and probably feel they should be doing better than the table suggests.

“We feel quite good about it, they’re a good side and I think we match up well against them.

“We probably should have won a couple more games than we have so far and I’m sure they feel the same.”

Bardon is hoping to have his whole squad available for selection this weekend, but admits North London have had frequent team changes all season.

“We are more or less full strength, we’ve a bit of a revolving door in a few places which happens at this time of year as everyone goes away.”

The captain admitted his frustration of having a rain off at this crucial stage in the season.

“It’s a shame it got rained off on the weekend as we felt we could have got a result and now it’s put even more pressure on this game.

“Every game was rained off so that was a bit of a silver lining for us, but it is frustrating to put all that work in all week and feel confident only to have no match.”

Bardon also believes even with a rain off, there is no reason for his side to panic, as he believes they can still avoid relegation to Division Three.

“I’m not thinking too much about it the same as we didn’t think about promotion last year,” he said.

“I try not to think about it too much until it happens and we’re just thinking about each and every game at a time.

“There are only 20 points separating the bottom five in the league.

“All we really need to do is string a couple results together.

“I think we only need to get two or three results in the last six to avoid relegation.”