DEFIANT Nick Crabbe believes his Marlborough side can still, somehow, avoid the drop.

They sit ninth in Glos/Wilts and travel to bottom of the table Hatherley and Reddings on Saturday in a crunch relegation match. Who-ever loses is sure to go down.

"If we don't win we don't deserve to stay up," said Crabbe bluntly. "Also, if it gets rained off we are in quite a lot of trouble because we really need to win three from three.

"Even though we have only won three all season I think we can do it."

But Gloucester City Winget inflicted Marlborough's seventh defeat of the season on Saturday and hammered another nail into their coffin.

The hosts had set a daunting total for the strugglers as Tom Wallbridge (1-57) claimed one wicket, with the rest of the dismissals coming from run outs.

But even then Crabbe was not happy with the fielding.

"Both of their guys who got 100 (Richard Howell and Paul Carter) were both dropped off fairly regulation catches early on," he said. "We bowled well but our fielding let us down."

In reply, Crabbe hit 57 with Frank Whiting (55), Pete Day (39no) and George Fox (32no) trying to salvage the points.

Crabbe said:"We were in the game at 110-1 after 25 overs, were scoring fairly quickly and I got the feeling they were getting pretty desperate for a wicket.

"We then got tied down by their spinners and had to reassess things with ten overs to go and make sure we got the five batting points."

"It was a great batting track, and it showed because only ten wickets fell for over 500 runs."