Harold Wood captain Craig Perrin is backing his side to be competitive and potentially cause an upset against local rivals Hornchurch.
Wood make the short trip to Harrow Lodge Park on Saturday as they look to build on their first win of the Hamro Foundation Essex League Premier Division season.
“They’re clearly a very good side with lots of good players in their team, but like I say most weeks I'm very confident in our own team and our own abilities,” said Perrin.
“I’m sure we’ll be competitive and hopefully we can come out on the right side of things. The table is very congested at the moment, if you win a game you go up a few spots, and if you lose then you go down.
“We want to just be putting ourselves in a position to win as many games as possible. You won’t win every game of course.”
Perrin's side sealed a one-run win over Colchester on Saturday after they won the toss, elected to bat first and posted a score of 211-8.
Perrin (72) and Hamzah Ikram (60) led the charge before Wood restricted their opponents to 210-7.
“It was a very good game of cricket and obviously brilliant for us to come out on the right side of that, it was really positive to get our first win of the season on the board,” Perrin said.
“We’ve been very competitive in the first few games and unfortunately come out on the wrong side of the games. It was nice to be on the right side of this one, but it could have gone either way.
"And when it comes down to one run, Colchester will be feeling they could have won of course.
“I feel personally that I'm batting very well and in good form, but the partnership with Hamzah is really what set the platform for us to get a score on the board that our bowlers were able to defend.
“It was a really strong partnership and brilliant for Hamzah to spend some time in the middle and help us towards that total.”
Wood suffered a nine-wicket defeat to Belhus in the T20 on Bank Holiday Monday, though, and Perrin added: “It’s one that we’re going to put behind us fairly quickly, we know we didn’t perform up to our standards that we expect, and we were quite comfortably beaten on the day.
“It didn’t quite go to plan and we move on as we look to bounce back.”
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