GERRARDS Cross CC weren’t able to pull off a last-day rescue act in Division One of the Home Counties League, but chairman Charles Hunt is confident the club will regroup and come back stronger for the experience.

They needed a victory over Oxford to have any chance of leapfrogging Aston Rowant and Harefield, but they went down by 23 runs after failing to chase down 213.

The defeat added to a telling list of narrow loses for Cross, who went down by two wickets to Burnham, Slough and Banbury this summer to go with impressive wins over Harefield, High Wycombe and Aston Rowant.

Hunt said: “We’re disappointed to go down, but we have to be realistic.

“We were the fourth team to go up with the restructuring last year, so we were obviously going to be one of the weaker sides.

“I’m not sure if we can say promotion came at the wrong time because you have to take these things when they’re offered, and we actually weren’t far away.

“But the Bucks opener Hamza Taj left for a club in Surrey and Pratik Patel was injured for a long spell, and we just didn’t have the squad to cope.

“But we’re a young squad and a lot of players will have learned a lot from this experience.”

Cross have been fighting a rearguard action for much of the summer, but a draw at Tring followed by wins of High Wycombe and Aston Rowant gave them hope going into the final weekend.

That hope would have burned bright after reducing Oxford to 106-7, but the final three wickets more than doubled the total and Cross were under pressure again when they fell to 36-4.

Sam Westaway (23), Sam Bracey (29) and Vikram Banerjee (33) tried to spark a recovery, but in the end they fell short.

The season isn’t over yet for Cross though.

On Sunday they host Bledlow Village in the Bucks County Cup semi-final.