Skipper Ed Joyce has warned Sussex face a scrap to avoid relegation.

Sussex slipped into the bottom two in division one of the Championship yesterday after they were thrashed by Nottinghamshire at Horsham.

Joyce’s men went down by an innings and 103 runs at Cricketfield Road to suffer a sixth defeat in their last nine games.

The county have five games remaining to avoid dropping into division two for the first time since 2010 and Joyce says they must stand up and be counted.

Joyce said: “We are in a relegation battle. A couple of weeks ago I was pretty bullish and said we weren’t in a relegation battle but we are now and need to be up for the fight.

“We don’t want to be in the bottom two and I’m pretty certain we wouldn’t be in this position but for the players we have out injured.

“That has made it really difficult for us, I’m not going to lie, but it doesn’t look like we are going to get anyone back soon so we need to turn it around with the players we have got.”

Chris Jordan, above, has an outside chance of returning from a side strain for the next Championship match at Lord’s on August 7 but Lewis Hatchett, James Anyon and Ajmal Shahzad remain long-term absentees.

Sussex had hoped to boost their survival chances by bringing in an overseas spinner but a delay in the processing of Steve Magoffin’s passport application looks to have scuppered that deal.

Joyce added: “We are still searching for a spinner but we are a bit hamstrung with Steve Magoffin still being overseas. We had someone but unfortunately they are probably going to go somewhere else.”