ASTLEY and Tyldesley are enjoying an early-season success story both on and off the field.

The Gin Pit men have started the season with two straight victories – quite a contrast to last season when they didn't get their first league win until July.

And they have also had a huge boost to their facilities thanks to two grants amounting to almost £46,000.

A £42,000 injection by Viridor Credits is going towards providing three-bay practice nets while almost £4,000 from the ECB will help develop their clubhouse.

On the field they have already beaten Darcy Lever convincingly and Edgworth in a final-ball thriller last week and host Walshaw today.

Despite the fine start captain Jimmy Cutt is not getting carried away and sets an early-season modest target of competing in the middle third of the 18-club league.

A squad boosted by their former junior player Nathan Johnson, Sam Lowe from Worsley and late signing Tejumal Khan who made his debut last Saturday has strengthened their first team and added to a sizeable number of senior players.

They also started pre-season training earlier to improve a weakness of their game last season.

"We spent six weeks in a sports hall working only on fielding," said Cutt.

"That part of our game let us down last season. We didn't seize the moment in the field and take our catches at crucial times.

"I felt it was important put that right so I wanted us to start earlier and work on it."

Overseas player Travis Wordsworth has made a good start to the season with knocks of 82 and 93, but Cutt says it is more about the team than individuals.

"We've put in two good performances so far. We beat Darcy comfortably and off the last ball against Edgworth when we needed two to win and Chris Bullock hit a boundary for four.

"We just want to improve on last year when we felt if we had performed how we could we could have been a mid-table side.

"We ended up being in the bottom six and we should be playing to compete in the middle six if not slightly higher.

"We have strengthened and seem more competitive. We seem to have more options in more departments this year, more well equipped in more areas.

"And one of the good things is we have a good pool of players. We have had more than 30 players at practice and had 33 different players playing in our three senior teams last weekend.