ESSEX coach Paul Grayson is still clinging to the faint hope his side can win promotion from division two of the county championship.

They go into today’s final home match of the season against Glamorgan needing a minor miracle to go up.

The weather denied them an almost certain victory at Kent last week and means Essex trail Northamptonshire – who occupy the second and final promotion spot – by 21 points.

Although Northants are favourites to win promotion, Essex head coach Paul Grayson is still hoping his side can overturn the odds and snatch second place.

“We’ve played very well of late but although you can put yourself in a position to beat the opposition, you can’t beat the weather,” he said.

“In our last two away matches at Bristol and Canterbury, we lost significant time to the rain and frankly, both games I would have expected us to win given a full four days cricket.

“If we had been able to do that, then we’d find ourselves above Northants now so all credit to the players who have been outstanding in the past two or three months in all formats of cricket.

“We’ve been very consistent and shown a great hunger and desire to keep winning matches and all credit to them for the way they’ve gone about it. All we can do now is focus on the game with Glamorgan and win the match and if Northants slip up, then we put increased pressure on them.

“But if Northants and Lancashire do go up, then so be it because they will have proved themselves to be the best two sides. They both got a bit of a head start on us and we have to acknowledge that Lancashire beat us at Chelmsford and we got hammered by Northants at their place.

“But we still have two matches to play, anything can happen and all we can do is to try and win these games and see where we are then.”

Essex expect to have Ravi Bopara back from England duty for today’s game.