Jim Troughton insists that no-one in Warwickshire’s squad will be getting ahead of themselves following the Bears’ surprise climb into the thick of the County Championship title race.

But after the Bears closed in on top two Durham and Lancashire by thrashing Sussex at Arundel last week there is no mistaking the quietly increasing confidence within captain Troughton and his team.

As the season turns towards its home straight Warwickshire sit third, eight points behind second-placed Lancashire, whom they meet in Liverpool at the start of August, and 31 behind leaders Durham who have played a game more.

Durham are favourites but all the top three have won the same number of games, six, and a fascinating run-in to the season awaits.

Certainly, Warwickshire have built the sort of momentum which could bring the pennant back to Edgbaston for the first time since they ground their way to triumph under John Inverarity and Nick Knight in 2004.

That year, like this, the Bears were highly unfancied at the start of the season. And another similarity between the two campaigns is in the understated, but shrewd, leadership.

In 2004, captain Knight never allowed anybody’s thoughts to stray beyond the next game. He deployed the take-one-game-at-a-time strategy to an obsessive degree.

And, despite his team having just hammered Somerset and Sussex in the last two matches, Troughton’s reflections are similar balanced and low-key

“I want us to feel the same way now as we did after our win at Somerset in the very first game of the season,” he said.

“Let’s just keep executing our skills, keep enjoying our cricket and improving. We’ll see where it takes us,” he said. “We are in a good position. We are eight points behind Lancashire and have a game in hand over Durham.

“We have a return game to come against Sussex and double-headers against Yorkshire and Hampshire so we have got to look to seize our chances against those teams who have struggled this year.

"If we can perform well against those teams it will put us right up there in the hunt.”

Warwickshire’s strong progress in the Championship has come as a surprise to many county cricket followers in the light of their narrow avoidance of relegation last season.

But Troughton insists the at times painful travails of 2010, or precisely the surmounting of them, have had positive consequences this year.