County Championship: Northants hope to make Notts 'twitchy' in promotion race

David Ripley has been Northants head coach since replacing David Capel in August 2012

Northamptonshire head coach David Ripley says his side are in the kind of form to make things "twitchy" for Notts in their crucial Championship game.

It is a must-win game for Northants, who are third in Division Two, 29 points behind this week's opponents.

They have achieved back-to-back victories since losing to Notts by 163 runs at Trent Bridge last month.

Avenging that loss will keep them in the promotion race ahead of next week's final game against Leicestershire.

"Riki Wessels played a massive part in that game (last month) - if he'd had a couple of failures you never know how it would have finished," Ripley told BBC Radio Northampton.

"Since then we've played very well in two matches.

"They have one or two players missing, and from sitting in almost like a bullet-proof position, with Worcester and ourselves winning (last week), it's maybe made it a little bit more twitchy for them than it was a month ago."

Riki Wessels made 69 and 116 for Notts against Northants at Trent Bridge

Ripley expects to have pace bowlers Ben Sanderson and Nathan Buck available, along with on-loan all-rounder Luke Proctor.

"I think we're going to have pretty much a full house," he said.

"Rory (Kleinveldt) has a niggle and other guys have played three games back-to-back and that's kind of wearing, but they've done well, so we dust those lads off or look to freshen it up a little a bit."

Northants have already won seven games this season, two more than in their entire campaign when they won promotion in 2013, but Ripley has no complaints.

"We've played pretty consistently good cricket and haven't really got the rewards we might have got in other years, but that's just how it's been this year," he added.

"The fact that others are winning as well has meant we are where we are, but we've played some good cricket and that is important to us."