A RICHARD Temple hat-trick failed to ease Royston s relegation fears. They are staring at a second successive drop after another poor performance saw them lose a low-scoring game against Bluntisham. Royston recovered from the early losses of Mat Graham an

A RICHARD Temple hat-trick failed to ease Royston's relegation fears.

They are staring at a second successive drop after another poor performance saw them lose a low-scoring game against Bluntisham.

Royston recovered from the early losses of Mat Graham and Will Hall, and at 59-2 were reasonably well placed for a decent score.

It was not long, though, before normal service was resumed and Royston quickly collapsed to 103 all out in 38 overs, with skipper Adam Newman top-scoring with 30.

In reply, Bluntisham were struggling at 17-3 after early wickets from Temple and Newman, but some big hitting from Darren Fordham pushed Bluntisham towards their victory target.

There was brief joy for Royston when Temple dismissed Bigger, Parks and Prior in successive balls to take a hat-trick with the score on 102.

It was almost four wickets in four balls for Temple but with the ball hitting one of the ever-widening cracks on the Therfield wicket, it shot along the floor for four byes and Bluntisham were home with four wickets to spare.

With just one win from 13 of their 20 league fixtures, team manager Temple admitted his side must start picking up some league points.

He said: "It's definitely a low-scoring wicket at the moment - the cracks are widening and the 19 byes we conceded were all ones that shot through low where we'd have expected the ball to be carrying through to the keeper at waist height.

"We just need to use knowledge of the pitch to our advantage, and adjust our techniques accordingly, over the next few weeks in how we bat and bowl.

"It was nice to get a hat-trick but a little hollow as it didn't count for anything as we lost again.

"We certainly need to start winning soon otherwise we'll be dead and buried before the end of July.

"On a deteriorating wicket, I think if we'd have got just another 30 runs we could have won. I think we were well into the tail and there only looked one man likely to see them through. Unfortunately, we lost key middle-order wickets just as their main bowler was coming to the end of his spell, which was criminal really.

"If we'd have just seen him off, we'd have had 16 more overs against their other bowlers and could easily have got up to 140 or so which, looking back, was probably a winning total.