Buttler: Don’t blame the rain, we deserved to lose

JOS BUTTLER said England were ‘hurting’ after Ireland pulled off one of the upsets of this or any Twenty20 World Cup to claim one of their greatest victories. When rain came at the MCG with England needing 53 off 33 balls with five wickets left in a Super 12 ‘local derby’, the DLS method gave Ireland a five-run win. ‘We should let this hurt,’ said Buttler. ‘Days like today are very disappointing and you have to feel that. There’s no point saying, “Let’s sweep it under the carpet and move on”. We’ve got to reflect and do it quickly.

‘In the first 10 overs with the ball we were a long way short of the standards we set. We let Ireland get away from us. Although we did drag it back in the second half, that put us under a lot of pressure right from the start.’ England captain Buttler had no argument with umpires Paul Reiffel and Adrian Holdstock’s decision to take the teams off, even though Moeen Ali had just taken leg-spinner Gareth Delany for 14 runs off three balls.

‘It was getting quite heavy,’ he conceded. ‘We would have loved to stay on and try to hit a couple of sixes but the rain was getting too much. The game was lost before that. We were a long way short of where we needed to be. Ireland deserved to win.’

Buttler did agree there may have been gamesmanship from Ireland in slowing the game down, which was delayed at the start, with more rain on the way. They were two overs short of where they should have been when the game was called off. ‘Whether they knew rain was coming and slowed it down I don’t know,’ added Buttler. ‘But we had everything in our favour. If we’d been ahead on DLS they wouldn’t have been slowing the game down so we should take responsibility and never have let it get to that position.’

Mark Wood blamed himself as part of an under-performing England attack. ‘I’m angry and disappointed in myself,’ he said. ‘I could have been a lot more consistent and not given away as many four balls.’