POINTS are there to be fought for in the opinion of Royal Wootton Bassett skipper Darren Beasant, despite his side facing the daunting task of tackling unbeaten division leaders Marshfield.

Marshfield have won all five of their opening fixtures, and sit 23 points clear at the top of WEPL Wiltshire ahead of Warminster and Westbury.

In contrast, Bassett are yet to record their first victory of the season – but can claim to have battled hard for bonus points having registered 26 in total.

Beasant refuses to enter this weekend’s tie in a negative frame of mind, but does admit his XI might be forced to dig deep for additional bonus points should the game edge away from them.

“It’s not about how many games of cricket a team wins, you play for points,” said Beasant.

“What’s unforgivable is losing games of cricket and getting scores of zero or one. While we haven’t won games that we would’ve liked to, we picked up nine points away at Westbury – not many teams will do that.

“In other games, we’ve picked up six or seven points. So, we’ve managed to adopt a mentality of fighting for points, and our position is therefore not as challenging as it could be.

“We’ve got games against teams in a similar position to us, where we will be having players returning to full fitness.

“Maybe we can pick up a few wins from those games and put ourselves into mid-table, but I would be telling fibs if I said it wasn’t challenge right now.

“I’ve been playing WEPL Cricket for 20 years, and a captain for 10 or 12 of those years – this is as hard as it gets.”

Marshfield enter this weekend’s round of fixtures in hot form having disposed of Swindon comfortably at the County Ground last weekend.

The hosts were bowled out for just 85, before Sam Jukes and Dave Jenkins knocked off the runs required after openers Hamish Walker and Jeremy Bond lost their wicket cheaply.

Beasant added: “Marshfield are a very good side, and have been there or thereabouts for the past two years.

“They tend to have one or two results each year where they possibly implode a bit – and that has possibly cost them promotion.

“They’re a very talented side, with some great seam bowlers. It will be another hard game, but we have a couple of players coming back.

“You can’t approach a game expecting to lose, we’ll try and be as competitive as we can.

“If the game goes against us, we’ll do our best to scrap for points.”

Elsewhere in WEPL Wiltshire, Swindon will be looking to make up for last week’s crushing eight-wicket loss when travelling to out-of-form Potterne 2.