TONGE will not be getting carried away anytime soon, but they are confident their days as the Bolton League's whipping boys are over.

After winning just one league game in the previous two seasons the Castle Hill club have won three so far this season including two in the last two games.

They find themselves in the unfamiliarly heady position of mid-table in the Association Division, and while nobody is mentioning the 'P' word there is certainly a buzz of anticipation around the club.

"It's going well at the moment but we know how quickly things can change so we're keeping our feet on the ground," said captain Danny Delvard.

"We'll just keep doing what we're doing and see where it takes us but we're happy with the way things are going at the moment."

One of the big success stories at Tonge has been their Sri Lankan professional Tilaksha Malshan who has scored 530 runs and taken 30 wickets in all competitions so far this season.

So impressed have club officials been with him that they moved quickly this week to sign the 22-year-old up for two more seasons.

"He's been great for us," said the club's most experienced player, Nigel Partington. "He's quality but most of all he's fitted in really well with the lads.

"He's a nice lad and very humble and he's always around the club joining in.

"It's the same with our Aussie overseas Cameron Lucas. The two of them have been great for the team spirit which is something we have a lot of at Tonge.

"We're not going to talk about challenging for promotion or anything but we've done all right this season.

"We had one bad performance and I had a few things to say to the players and to be fair to them they came back and played well after that.

"We could have done better as well, we had one or two games we could have won which we didn't.

"But overall we're relatively happy with the way things are going. We seem to have found our feet and hit our straps at the right time so we'll just keep trying to do what we're doing and see what happens."

Club chairman Paul Schofield has been through some tough times in the 10 years he has been involved with the club.

But he is delighted with the progress Tonge are making on and off the field.

"It's a long time since we won two games on the trot or scored nearly 300 runs like we did at Darcy Lever last week," he said.

"People will now probably make us favourites when we play Golborne at home on Saturday. We don't necessarily but other people probably will, and how long has it been since anyone made us favourites to win a game?

"We're delighted to have signed up Tili [Malshan] for two more years, we got in early to do it before other clubs saw how good he was and tried to get him.

"We've also signed Sam Hardman from Heaton who's made a difference and we've had interest from other players about coming to join us.

"We don't know what will happen with any new signings but the fact people are thinking about playing for us shows people are thinking positively about Tonge again."