CAPTAIN Steve Adshead believes Astwood Bank will have to win three or four of their final six games if they are to pull off the great escape in the Birmingham League Division.

Bank suffered a fourth defeat in the last five games after they went down by seven wickets to Pelsall.

That saw them fall to second from bottom with just six games of the season remaining with an uphill task to escape the bottom four and avoid going down.

But there is hope for Bank as the league reverts to the win or lose format for the final matches.

Astwood prefer the ODI system and won four of the five first games under that scoring method but have struggled in the win/lose/draw system used during the middle of the season.

Adshead said: "We are entering the final stage of the season and need to start picking up results.

"It's not going to be easy and I think we need to win at least three or four to have a chance of staying up but I an confident we can turn it around.

"We like the win and lose system and we've got some of the teams around us.

"We won four out of five at the start of the summer but it's a slightly different situation when confidence is a bit low.

"But we're all working very hard behind the scenes to improve performances."

Bank's batting problems came to the fore again on Saturday.

They won the toss but were dismissed for 122, despite 30 runs each for Ryan Blakemore, Adshead and Joel Haslam.

Pelsall also struggled for runs but Todd Henderson's 52 off 43 balls proved to be the difference as they replied with 124-7, despite two wickets apiece for Michael Desmond, Thomas Harris and Matthew MacDonald.

Astwood go to mid-table Worcester on Saturday (noon start).