CHESHAM CC captain Ollie Turner has urged his players to take the emotion out of Saturday’s trip to Amersham as both sides try to kick start their seasons at the other’s expense.

The Bucks neighbours were promoted from the Thames Valley League alongside each other last summer and there is barely two miles between the two grounds, but despite the simmering rivalry Turner wants his players to keep cool and get the win that would put more distance between the two clubs.

He said: “It gets very competitive against them. We beat them twice last season and if we beat them again it would be two wins from three for us and a bit of a knock back for them with none from three.

“But if they win then we’re both one from three so it is an important match.

“But it’s a long season and we want to treat this like any other game. We know all about them and the games are usually very close, but we’ve got to keep the emotion out of it and do our jobs.”

Chesham had a fantastic start to the season when they won the only Division Two match to be completed, but a six-wicket loss to Reading last weekend halted them in their tracks.

Batting first, they got out of the blocks ok with Andy Goddard (13), Barnaby Atkins (37) and Mark Eteen (15) all getting runs, but it was carnage after that save for Matt Rance’s 33 and they were eventually all out for 172.

Even that might have been enough though, were it not for Praful Waghela, whose score of 101 not out was 64 runs higher than anyone else in the match.

Turner said: “If you take him out of it then it was a very even game. We were probably 50 runs short of where we’d like to have been but he was the difference.”