Blame us, not the rain

I'm not going to complain about losing to West Indies on the Duckworth-Lewis method. It is the best equation available to decide matches when the rain causes a delay, and you just have to deal with the circumstances. It certainly made our lives harder, though. When you are chasing a target of 80 in nine overs with 10 wickets in hand, you certainly have licence to go for it and West Indies were able to come through despite losing five wickets in the first six overs. We picked five specialist bowlers, plus we had Kevin Pietersen, Luke Wright and me available. With their innings reduced to nine overs, we obviously didn't have the chance to use all the options at our disposal. As I said, that shouldn't be used as an excuse, nor should it obscure the fact that we missed out on a place in the semis because we were not quite good enough. Our seamers have been fantastic in this tournament but just didn't get the execution exactly right tonight. But I don't want to attach blame to any individuals. Pushing on with our batting in the middle overs is another area of our game that we have been looking at, and it is a time when we have seen a few sides struggle - even Pakistan against Ireland earlier on Monday. People expect you to go out and smack fours and sixes but it isn't as easy as that. We felt a target of 160-odd over 20 overs was very competitive. We put up a great fight throughout a real rollercoaster of a tournament and I'm very proud of the way the guys have kept going. We put in a couple of good performances and most of our games were very exciting to watch, so hopefully it was entertaining for neutrals. It is such a shame not to be in the semis, because the atmosphere has been so good at our games. It is almost like a football crowd, with people singing the national anthem and chanting during the matches. With the Ashes coming up, it is great to see the British public turning out and supporting their team. I now hand the captaincy back to Andrew Strauss for the Ashes. I said to the boys after the game that I really enjoyed working with them and I felt that this time I captained with a smile on my face. I have done it my own way and I really enjoyed the challenge of being a Twenty20 skipper. It is such an up-and-down game emotionally and I'm proud to have had lads behind me who stuck to their task and gave everything. In the end we were not good enough but those two wins under pressure against Pakistan and India show we have a lot of character in this team.

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