Rainham captain Jon O’Neill was pleased to see his side bounce back from a narrow loss at Newham to beat Barking by six runs in the Shepherd Neame Essex League Tier Two Westley division.

Tom Herbert (62) top scored in Rainham’s 204 at Mayesbrook Park, with Jas Hothi (28) and Daniel Skipper (26) chipping in.

And O’Neill (3-43) wrapped up the win, after Husham Chatter (3-44) and Bhavik Patel (2-22) also had success, saying: “It was good to win a close game after losing out in one last week. Once again the guys showed great spirit and nobody shirked away from responsibility in the crunch moments.

“We’ve got a lot of big characters, captains and leaders on the field which makes the job of skippering the team so much easier.

“Husham Chattar got a key breakthrough after basically demanding the ball for a second spell despite having only one working thigh. You can’t ask for more than that.

“Apart from Tom Herbert, though, we still didn’t really come off with the bat and although we reached 200 on a tricky wicket against a decent attack, we left plenty of runs out there.”

Rainham welcome Walthamstow to Spring Farm Park this weekend and O’Neill wants more improvements, adding: “We haven’t hit the levels of last year yet – even though we’re in August. After only four games there’s still a bit of rust on show.

“Maybe that’s natural but expectations for us within the club and community are high, so I will be looking for individuals to take responsibility and push on that extra 5-10 per cent so we can really hit our stride in the remaining six games.”