.find is not a function on cheerio object

  let playersCell = `
    <td class="foo" colspan="2">
      <a href="example.com">
        <span class="bold">John Beluga</span>
         - Sarah Jay.
       </a>
    </td>
    `

let players = cheerio.load(playersCell)
players.find('a').html()

I try to load a html string into cheerio.js and find an a tag, but I am getting

[TypeError: players.find is not a function]

Console.log shows for players