CAPTAIN Jake Wakelin said his Witham Cricket Club side can’t dwell on a performance that he felt was their worst for a number of years.

Witham are in the Marshall Hatchick Two Counties Championship division one’s bottom three following a 113-run defeat at Hadleigh.

Seven dropped catches proved costly, particularly two where the hosts’ overseas player, Brock Price was put down before going on to score 150, and Wakelin was disappointed with all three aspects of his team’s game.

Thanks to Price’s score Hadleigh were able to go on and make 333 for five, before Witham were all out for 220 in their reply, however, Wakelin knows his team have to swiftly put it behind them when they host leaders Wivenhoe in their final outing of the first half of the season on Saturday.

He said: “Honestly, for me, that game at Hadleigh was the worst performance that I’ve seen us put in for a couple of years.

“That’s my opinion, but I felt the fielding was dreadful, the bowling - bar one or two - was dreadful and the batting wasn’t much better.

“It was a pretty poor game.

“We let their overseas player make 150 after we dropped him on nought and then four.

“In fact we dropped seven catches in the match and when you drop that many, it means you’re effectively having to take 17 wickets in the game and that’s incredibly tough in a 50-over match.

“The bowlers didn’t bowl down one side of the wicket to a set field and we just didn’t have any control.

“It was never easy for the batsmen to have a chance after that.

“It was just a poor all round display.

“It was unfortunate but we just have to forget about it and train hard this week.

“Everyone was disappointed with how we played and we need to put it away and make sure we don’t dwell on it too much.”

The game against Wivenhoe could see a return for the experienced Leroy Facey, who will be making his first Witham outing of the year and the skipper said he is one of the players they have missed in the first part of the campaign.

He added: “This year, we’ve had Kaan Hawes out, Leroy Facey hasn’t played and we’ve had no overseas player.

“Adrian (Chad) was our overseas last year and taking him and the other two out has been tough.

“I think if you took three big players like them out of any team - Woolpit, Wivenhoe or any of them in the league - then they would struggle.

“Leroy and Kaan have been players who have been a big part of our team for a long time.

“This is a rebuilding year for us, but I still believe we can compete.

“It just seems that things have gone against us as injuries and unavailabilities haven’t helped us, but we haven’t helped ourselves at times, like last weekend.

“I think we haven’t played as well as we can.”

Wakelin also said that he expected Matt Anderson to come back into for the team for the visit of Wivenhoe.