Brendon McCullum: We missed an opportunity

London: New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum rued his team’s missed opportunity after they were narrowly beaten by England in the ICC Champions Trophy at Cardiff on Sunday.

The Kiwis would have booked a place in the semi-finals if they had beaten the hosts, but they fell 10 runs short in their run-chase in the rain-affected match. That result left their future in the tournament hanging on Monday night’s Sri Lanka-Australia clash, with New Zealand needing the Aussies to win by a small margin if they are to scrape through to the last four.

And McCullum said: “We had an opportunity and we missed it. I thought we did a really good job with the ball in the latter part of the innings, restricting them to the score that we did. We were comfortable chasing that total. It was certainly achievable.

“It’s not nice when you leave your destiny in someone else’s hands. We’ll have to watch the Sri Lanka-Australia match and see what unfolds. But we had an opportunity and we passed it up. If we do get an opportunity [to play in the semi-finals], then great. If not, we know we’ve had a chance here and we passed it up.

“Trying to review the three games, we’ve bowled brilliantly, we fielded okay, but our batting needs some work.”

England were bowled out for 169 in the last of their 24 overs on Sunday and then reduced New Zealand to 62 for five. But Kane Williamson and Corey Anderson fought back with a rapid 73-run partnership to keep their team in the game until the death.

McCullum praised the pair’s efforts, especially debutant Anderson, but also hailed England’s bowling attack.

“England bowled brilliantly at the start, swinging the ball with good pace and putting us under a lot of pressure. We could not maintain the run rate — the fall of wickets was always going to make things tough,” he said.

“Kane and also Corey on debut got us close and that could prove to be incredibly valuable if the other result goes our way.”

McCullum refused to pin the blame for defeat on the catches dropped by his older brother Nathan, who spilled Alastair Cook three times during his innings of 64 but finally went on to take four catches.

“I thought he had taken three but then we counted them up afterwards and found he took four. He is a brilliant fielder,” the skipper said.

“He dropped a couple of catches but I think he’s still probably up in terms of his fielding ability. We certainly won’t begrudge him for that.

“But obviously it makes it hard when you do miss chances, and we dropped four catches. We know we weren’t quite at our best, but I still think that, overall through the tournament, our fielding has been good.”