Double blow as defeat to Gateshead sees Ashington cricket lose top spot

The Mighty Acorns were knocked off top spot in the first division table on Saturday night after they lost to Gateshead Fell whilst at the same time, Castle Eden defeated Sacriston by a 208 runs margin.

McCafferty said: “We need to look at the next five weeks where we have five cup finals left – and we need to be looking to win every game.

" We are off the top and Shotley Bridge are closing that gap in third place. It’s disappointment for us now and we cannot dwell on it going into next Saturday but it’s not all doom and gloom.

"We have to be positive and look at the season as a whole and the cricket that we have played and we need to get back to winning ways.”

He continued: “It was an all round poor team performance today. From how we’ve been chasing scores this season, it was very unlike us as I think we have been clinical this year.

"Today was hopefully just a blip and we need to people to step up and be counted going into the last part of the season with big performances. We’ll be training twice and let the dust settle on this; analyse it a little bit and speak about it and put it out of our minds going into the game against Washington on Saturday.

"We have a big five weeks – and five weeks that we should be excited about playing, going into this stage of the season with something to play for."

McCafferty said a ‘mad half hour of batting’ cost his side dearly as they went down to a third league defeat of the season at home to Gateshead Fell.

"I didn’t think we were at the races bowling wise. We were not smart enough with our lines and were getting hit to the short boundary far too much. Then we dropped a few catches and we were a bit sloppy.

"By contrast we started the second half like a train and Jack Jessop and Scott Pearcey were batting lovely together. After Jessop was out, Jack McCarthy got going as well – only none of them really went on to get a match winning knock for us – something which we always speak about looking to do when you are set as a batsman. Consequently, there’s massive disappointment in the camp.”