ESSEX captain Mark Pettini has issued a rallying call to his troops ahead of the Colchester Cricket Festival that begins at Castle Park today.

The county meet lowly Leicestershire in a four-day Championship match from today and then, on Sunday, host Sussex in a must-win Pro40 match.

Pettini, whose side have won just one of their last 14 competitive matches in all competitions, knows how important it is for the county to rediscover their winning ways.

"We need to win both matches," he admitted.

"Losing to Gloucestershire at Southend was a great blow to our (championship) promotion hopes and we lost a good opportunity to close the gap on Somerset and Nottinghamshire at the top of Division Two.

"I wouldn't say promotion is out of the question because there are still four games to go and three wins could make things interesting again.

"We showed glimpses in the Gloucestershire game that we can play good cricket and, in the end, we weren't beaten by too big a margin.

"What we have to do is to take the positives out of that into the last four games. If we do that, we might be in with a chance."

Having been crowned champions in the one-day league for the past two seasons, Essex now find themselves facing an uphill struggle to retain their First Division status in the Pro40 League this season.

The Eagles have failed to win any of their five matches and sit just one place off the bottom of the table - not helped by their live SKY TV match against Nottinghamshire being washed out last Wednesday.

"That was the second time this season that we have had a match totally washed out and we now only have three matches left to play," Pettini lamented.

"We probably need to win all three matches and that will certainly be our target."