Essex will be seeking to rediscover form when taking on Lancashire Lightning in the Royal London One-Day Cup at The E.C.G on Tuesday but the hosts will be without Ravi Bopara.

The all-rounder is missing for the next four matches in the One-Day Cup as he is part of the England Lions group that are competing in a triangular series v New Zealand A and Sri Lanka A.

Facing up to the absence of Bopara and the need to recover from Saturday’s defeat to Birmingham Bears at the quarter-final stage of the NatWest T20 Blast, Head Coach Paul Grayson said; “Obviously Ravi is a huge loss but it gives someone an opportunity and show what they can do.

“It was hugely disappointing to be knocked out of the T20 Blast on Saturday night but the nature of county cricket is such that we go straight away into another competition. We have to pick ourselves up, we can’t feel sorry for ourselves, we need to work hard and put a decent run of form together so that we can progress in this format.

“I expect to see some good character from our players on Tuesday and collectively expect them to put in a big performance. We are in a good group in our section of this competition and so it’s down to ourselves to play some good cricket and get our confidence going.

“Lancashire are a good side but we have to back ourselves and the squad that we’ve got. We’ve got some big games coming up in the next week with another home game on Friday when we play Gloucestershire before we have back to back away matches with Derbyshire and Yorkshire.”

Bottom of the section Lancashire have lost both Group A matches so far whilst the Eagles have won one and lost one of their two games in the competition so far.