Wanstead & Snaresbrook captain Joe Ellis-Grewal wants to make Chelmsford wait as they look to be crowned champions of the Hamro Foundation Essex League Premier Division.

The Herons travel to leaders Chelmsford on Saturday sitting 36 points adrift in second place with two fixtures left to be played.

And skipper Ellis-Grewal is keen to take the race to the wire and make the leaders have to win on the final day of the season to win the league title.

“It would be nice to get a strong win and make them have to win the week after in order to win the league,” Ellis-Grewal said.

“We’re looking forward to going there, hopefully trying to beat them, and leave us thinking maybe what could have been.

“It’s a place we like to go, they’re a good team, and they’ve been good all season. We know it will be a big game for us.”

Wanstead suffered a setback last weekend in a 39-run defeat at Brentwood after winning the toss and electing to field first as Aaron West’s side scored 173-9 thanks to Jack Hebron (54), Christopher Green (39), and Guy Balmford (37) despite Zain Shahzad (3-26) impressing with the ball.

Wanstead were bowled out for 134 in reply with Jonathan Das (31) top scoring as Green (5-34) did most of the damage with the ball for Brentwood.

“I thought we did ok to restrict them to 173, it was obviously a shortened format with plenty of rain, which probably suits them a little bit better than it does us," added Ellis-Grewal.

“We bowled and fielded quite well, then with the bat the damage was really done up top. I think we were 24-4 and you will always struggle to chase those sort of totals when you lose so many wickets up top.

“It was disappointing, our batting has been pretty poor all season, and it showed again on Saturday.”

The captain added: “He’s (Chris Green) a professional cricketer and let’s be honest he’s paid a lot of money to turn up every week, you want to play against those guys, but also they should be performing.

“Batting wise he was really good for them, I think the bowling figures looked a little bit better than they potentially were, obviously we were trying to go after him at the end and he picked up the last four or five.”