Witham Cricket Club are hoping the return of three key players will help them bounce back from consecutive Marshall Hatchick Two Counties Championship division one defeats.

The loss of captain Jake Wakelin, Kaan Hawes and Simon Jones didn’t help Witham’s cause as they went down to a six-wicket defeat by Frinton seconds and they are now looking for a positive response when they head to bottom side Copford on Saturday.

Coming on the back of a loss to Mildenhall the previous week, the latest result has been a blow to Witham’s title aspirations, but Leroy Facey, who stood in as skipper against Frinton in Wakelin’s absence, feels they can bounce back.

He said: “You have to be realistic and say that if you take three players out like Jake, Kaan and Jonesy then it would affect any team in the league.

“We know we didn’t perform and where we fell short, but we have learned that when we have a bad performance, we don’t dwell on it.

“We’ll train hard this week and all three of them should be back this week.

“Coming off a performance like we put in against Frinton, we’ll look to respond well.

“We won’t take Copford for granted, though.

“They are where they are at the foot of the table, but we treat everyone the same in this league.

“We know we messed up a bit, but we will be looking for a response and hopefully we can take it out on Copford.

“There is a bit of a gap now between us and (leaders) Mildenhall but there are a lot of games to play still and we certainly aren’t out of the race.

“It’s all to play for and we just have to take it game by game.”

In a game that was reduced to 45-overs per side against Frinton, Witham were only able to make 113 for eight and that proved too small a target as the Seasiders got home with only four wickets down.

Facey said: “We didn’t have the three guys who would regularly be in the side, but we had a decent enough side out and it was just that we didn’t perform well enough to be honest.

“Maybe we didn’t judge the conditions well enough.

“Frinton bowled well and put it in good areas, but we just struggled to get the ball away.

“Maybe we were a bit negative, but then when we bowled, they had had a look at it and thought that even though the conditions weren’t great, if the ball was there, they would whack it and it came off for them.”