There’s a crucial weekend in store for Sandwich Town on two fronts.

Fourth-bottom Town, who lost at home to Tunbridge Wells last weekend, visit a St Lawrence & Highland Court side this Saturday, still harbouring title ambitions.

Sandwich then visit Surrey Championship Division 1 Walton-On-Thames on Sunday for a place in The 2023 Conference Cup Final for the Bertie Joel Trophy.

For now, though, their attention is firmly on league matters.

“Four teams have a chance of winning the league and I think there’s six teams that could go down,” said skipper Jan Gray.

“Every moment and every week, the table can almost turn on its head.

“We’ve played there [St Lawrence] for pre-season friendlies and in the Covid League in 2020. But in terms of competitive cricket, no, not recently.

“I’d have played there when I was with Folkestone - but that was a lot of years ago now!”

St Lawrence & Highland Court have had legendary ex-Kent all-rounder Darren Stevens in their ranks this summer.

They have looked noticeably stronger when he’s available, albeit the talismanic 47-year-old missed their weekend five-wicket home win over basement boys Holmesdale.

But Gray said: “If he plays, we will just have to get him out.

“It’s pointless worrying about it. He will either be playing or he will not be playing - and we cannot do anything about it.”

Straight after that, however, Sandwich’s eyes will be on booking a Final place for next month where they will face either Hornsey or Hornchurch.

On Semi-Final opponents Walton-On-Thames, Gray noted: “I’m pretty certain we played them in this competition a couple of years ago.

“I think we won on that occasion but I don’t know a lot about them.

“My intel is that it’s a lovely ground so that will be nice.

“The cup is lovely to be involved in and we will do our best to try and win it.”

That double-header comes after Sandwich went down to Tunbridge Wells in a low-scoring affair.

Ben Smith got to work with 4-14 after opening bowlers Alex Smith (3-26) and Rory Smith (1-20) had done early damage amid Wells’ 101 all out.

Gray said: “Alex bowled beautifully - and Rory did as well.

“Alex got a lot of their best players out. Rory bowled well at the other end that’s hard to get wickets from.

“Then, Ben bowled absolutely beautifully. We fielded very well and stopped the ball from going through the ring a lot.

“Overall, we did fantastically well to keep them to around 100.”

That appeared a fairly modest total, only for Sandwich to be skittled for 77.

“It was disappointing,” Gray reflected. “We didn’t want to lose that one.

“I thought, actually to be fair, it looks like it was a very low-scoring game.

“It was a difficult pitch but I think both teams underperformed with the bat quite a lot. Both teams bowled very well.

“We, obviously, didn’t think we had won at halfway but you expect to chase 100 down most of the time.”

It could have been worse for them, too, had No.11 Ben Smith not chipped in with 24.

Gray said: “Ben batted very well.

“There was a period of hope but it was always going to be too much to ask him to do it himself.”