Batting failure caused England to lose series

Abu Dhabi: England's captain Andrew Strauss was "bitterly disappointed" with the series loss to Pakistan and said the batting failed again as his team tried to clear the "final frontier".

"It's bitterly disappointing because we worked so hard over the course of the game to get ourselves into a winning position," said Strauss after his side were bowled out for 72 while chasing 145 for a win. "Sometimes those sort of totals are the hardest to chase because you know that you're almost there. I suppose it's easy to get caught between two schools, whether to be patient and wait for scoring opportunities to appear or to take the bull by the horns," he added.

England arrived here after white-washing India 4-0 and replacing them as Test team number one, but two defeats have left Strauss clueless on tackling spin as well as the conditions.

Final frontier

"As I said at the start of this tour this is the final frontier in a lot of ways, the sub-continent. English sides haven't done very well out here in the past and we came here and approached things pretty positively," he said.