ILKESTON Rutland skipper Dave Smit is looking onwards and upwards after his side's winning draw at reigning champions Spondon.

Smit's men have been struggling down near the bottom of the Derbyshire Premier League table but Saturday's positive result reduced the gap on the teams directly above them and gave the captain reason to predict brighter times ahead.

“I was very pleased,” said Smit, whose 38 helped the visitors post 187-5 declared from 31 overs in a rain-affected game. “It was a very good result for us.

“We could have easily called it off and taken nothing out of the game but both teams and the umpires stuck at it to get a game played.

“I was pleased with our batting. In the last two or three games, we have just started to gel.

“For the first six games of the season, we played quite well but had little bad patches of 10 overs where we lost games.

“But in the last three games, we seemed to have gelled more, so I am very optimistic for the second half of the season.”

With Spondon quickly reduced to 16-3, it could have been even better for Ilkeston, until Sam Kellogg and Warren Bell got Spondon back into contention with a century stand.

“Certainly, when we got the first three wickets, I thought we had a good chance of bowling them out,” said Smit.

“But they batted well and, in the end, got into a position where they probably should have won it. We were quite worried at that stage.

“We said at the start that we would take a winning draw and we have thrown away games from worse positions than that, so we didn't want to push too hard to bowl them out towards the end.

“We were quite happy to take the points, particularly with the position we are in the league at the moment.”