COUNTY chief Neil Shardlow is urging his players not to lose heart despite their miserable, winless season so far.

Wiltshire have failed to win any of their four Minor Counties Knockout Trophy matches and this week suffered a three-wicket defeat at Devon in the Minor Counties Championship Western Division – their fourth on the bounce.

Team boss Shardlow admits his side’s woes have been hard on the younger players in the county squad but, with just two three-day matches of the season remaining, is hoping that his team can end the summer campaign with their heads held high.

“There’s obviously only so much that you can say to the players and whatever it is that’s been going wrong for us, we’ve just not been able to put our finger on it,” said Shardlow.

“The most frustrating thing about it all is that we’ve competed with other sides and had plenty of good individual performances but we’ve just not been putting everything together to get a result.

“If you look at our results, we’ve picked up every bonus point, bar one batting point that we were a just a few runs away from getting, but maybe a bit of complacency or lack of application has let us down.

“It would be great if we could pick up a draw or a win from our last two games.

“That’s still going to be very hard but from the way that we’ve competed, we know that we’re not a million miles away.

“We’ve got a young side, with a lot of players that are getting used to this type of credit, and they’ll gain a lot of experience from this season.”

Despite last summer’s 2012 campaign being decimated by wet weather, Wiltshire reached the final of the KO Trophy for the third time in their history, where they lost out to Cumberland.

Shardlow’s men also secured an impressive third-placed finish in the three-day Minor Counties Championship.

With 31 bonus points under their belt, Wiltshire currently sit second-from-bottom in the table and their penultimate clash of the campaign sees them take on Wales at Trowbridge CC on August 4-6.

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