STUART Wedge has called on Himley to grind their way out of their current slump.

The Stourbridge Road outfit suffered their second successive Birmingham League Premier Division defeat at Walsall last Saturday as their batsmen again failed to fire.

Himley were bowled out for 102 as the hosts went on to secure a six-wicket victory.

Skipper Wedge is still some way from pressing the panic button and says his side must simply knuckle down and keep working ahead of this Saturday’s trip to Kidderminster Victoria.

He said: “I’m trying to stay positive.

“There are few issues which need to be addressed, you always need to work on your game, even when you are playing well. You have to walk out to the wicket knowing you have done everything possible to be a success.

“We’ve had a couple of bad results but we had a couple of very good results at the start of the season and I don’t believe you become a bad side overnight.

“We do have the players in the side it’s just a question of grinding this period out.”

After Chris Tranter was dismissed for one run against Walsall, fellow opener Greg Wright (23) and Nathan Round (22) managed to get the score to 40 before the latter was bowled by Josh Bowker.

Wickets fell regularly from then onwards, with the hosts’ Ben McFarlane finishing with impressive figures of 5-27.

Ashfak Hussain took 3-49 as Himley gamely tried to fight back but there simply weren’t enough runs on the board.

And although there was some hope when Christiaan Jonker was the fourth wicket down with the score on 72, Paul Byrne (26 not out) and James Middleton (15no) saw the hosts home.

Wedge added: “It’s always difficult to get the runs when you are batting first. You could tell with their innings it was a difficult wicket to bat on in any case.

“If we could have scraped together around 140 or 150 it would have been quite a challenging total.

“To be bowled out for 102 was not what we were looking for and there were probably a couple of soft dismissals.”