'I'm not too alarmed' - Uddingston Cricket Club skipper Bryan Clarke remains upbeat despite side slumping to bottom of table

The North Lanarkshire side went down to their fourth defeat from five league games this season after they were all out for 201 from 40 overs, chasing West’s total of 251/7 from 50 overs.

Uddingston skipper/wicket keeper Bryan Clarke told the Times and Speaker: “We certainly don’t want to be bottom of the league after winning it two years ago and getting third or whatever last year.

"But I’m not too alarmed. We have had a real tricky run of games and we’ve actually only played one home game.

“Saturday’s game was a bit of a strange one for us. We sort of bowled poorly in places but they took the game away from us by batting really well.

"We had lost one of our bowlers – Zeeshan Azhar – injured so that didn’t help and we fell a bit short.

"The next couple of weeks we play the teams that are closest to us in the league. Realistically we’ve got to win those games, we’ve got to get back on it.”

Uddingston received a much needed boost by beating Ferguslie by 48 runs in Sunday’s Scottish Cup second round match.

Uddy batted first and scored 248 from their 50 overs including 78 for Ross Lyons and 54 for Moneeb Iqbal. They then bowled out Ferguslie for 200 to seal a home quarter-final against Ayr.

"We were playing at home which made a huge difference,” Clarke said. “We needed a home game, we needed to feel a wee bit more comfortable and that helped us massively because we’ve gone to some tricky places recently."

Uddingston visit second bottom Kelburne in the league this Saturday.

Clarke said: “We really need to buck our ideas up in the league. I’m pretty confident that in the next couple of weeks we’ll be starting to move again.

"We’ve not necessarily been playing badly but we’ve just not been able to string whole performances together.”