READING CC responded to their captain's call to arms by breaking their two-month winless run against Cove on Saturday.

David Hartley told the Chronicle last week that his players needed to start showing their class.

And a number of them, including Hartley himself, did just that as they beat Cove by 55 runs to ease their relegation worries in Home Counties Division Two West.

"It was a really good performance," said the skipper. "The batsmen got stuck in on a wicket that wasn't easy to score on. Praful [Waghela] batted very well then Curran [Gaur] got stuck in and ground out a good score, which was what we needed somebody to do as we were losing wickets in clusters.

"The guys responded, but even when we haven't played well we have played with good team spirit and maintained that."

Reading will now be hoping to record back-to-back wins when they host another struggling side, Farnham Royal, this Saturday (11.30am start).

This weekend sees the return to the 50 overs per side format which Hartley thinks may benefit his team slightly.

"Where it could benefit us is we have five frontline bowlers, unlike a lot of sides. So we can get 10 overs out of all of them whereas other sides have to make up the rest of the overs," he said.

Reading used up all of their 60-over allocation last Saturday to make it to 191-9 on a tricky pitch.

Waghela (55) and Gaur (54) both hit half centuries at contrasting paces, with Waghela's coming off 52 balls and Gaur's off 127.

Tail-enders Kashif Nasim (14*) and Simon Andersson (15) were the next top scorers as the rest of the batsmen struggled to score.

And Andersson (2-34) was soon at the forefront with the ball too as he took two early wickets to leave Cove 21-2.

Nasim (1-32) and Hartley (6-36) followed up with a couple more quick dismissals as the home side slipped to 34-4.

They failed to recover from the poor start and, with Hartley on song, were all out for 136 to hand Reading a 55-run win.