Minster extended their lead at the top of the Kent League Premier Division table after winning Saturday’s top-of-the-table clash.

Five games remain and Minster are now 34 points clear at the top of the table.

A trip to Bromley side Bickley Park is up next. Their opponents are bottom but Minster captain David Masters isn’t expecting the challenge to be any easier.

Masters said: “They have got two or three good players who can win a game of cricket.

“They have a good left-arm spinner who bats and gets runs and they have a couple of decent seamers and decent batters.

“I know they are bottom but they don’t want to be bottom and they are going to probably push us as hard as they can.

“Everyone says we have an easy run-in but I don’t always think it is very easy when you have people fighting for relegation, they become just as hard, if not harder games. There is more on it for them.

“The people in third and fourth are thinking ‘Well, we can’t win the league but we’re not going to go down’ and they turn up and have a game of cricket.

“The people down the bottom are thinking they need to stay in the league and they have got to go hell for leather, give everything they have got. Sometimes they are the hardest games.”

Minster batted first against Hayes at the weekend and were 304 all out. Kai Appleby (101) hit his second ton in as many weeks while Aron Nijjar scored 65.

It was a total that Hayes couldn’t match. Max Luckett and Daniel Masters took three wickets each as the South Londoners were beaten by 101 runs.

Masters said: “It was a good result and we did all the right things but we let them probably have more than they got. We should have beaten them even more comfortable than we did.

“A team in second, right behind us, you would always expect a team right out in front to be a bit more laid back and chilled but I think we looked like we wanted it a lot more than what they did in the game.

“We had a couple of excellent performances again, Kai played brilliantly. He got his first century last week and he’s doubled up and got another this week.

“It is not just about getting a century though, it is how quickly he got them [he got 101 from 50 balls on Saturday] and at the stage he got them, he just really took it away from them.

“With two or three players they have got in their team you could never say it was a guarantee but it was a lot of runs to get against our bowling attack.

“The wicket did a bit early on but flattened out and it was the same both innings. It did plenty early on and then flattened out once the ball got a bit older.

“We played it really well, got stuck in and they probably struggled to deal with our bowlers a bit more than what we did with theirs. Ours were just a little bit quicker and hit their areas more consistently than what they did, especially early.”

There’s plenty more to do but after all four Minster teams won for the second weekend running there was plenty to be happy about on Saturday.

Masters said: “Our boys generally celebrate quite a lot anyway and there was a reverse raffle karaoke that night for the whole club in the bar on Saturday and so that was bouncing!

“The club is in a good spirit at the moment, a happy place as you would expect, with our second and third teams second in their divisions at the moment.

“We are on a bit of a roll and if you are going to make a bit of a push for it then this is the money time, the time to have a good old go at it.”