McCullum praises team despite loss

Dubai: New Zealand skipper Brendon McCullum feels that his injury-hit team's fighting performance in the second Twenty20 match against Pakistan was outstanding.

"We had a pretty skeleton line-up due to injuries but my players stepped up and put Pakistan under pressure. Before the match I had asked my guys for one last push. Though we lost, we put up a fantastic fight," said McCullum who captained the team in the absence of an injured Daniel Vettori

"We bowled pretty well. The total of 150 was a par score and we did a good job to restrict them. Ian Butler was fantastic with the ball and put Pakistan under pressure. We were going pretty well towards the target unfortunately we could not do it," he added

McCullum hit a fighting 47 off 41 balls hoping to pull off an exciting win. "As per our plan we wanted someone at the top order to bat through the innings. I decided to try and keep the runs coming and create some partnerships."

McCullum fell at a crucial stage of the game. "I hit the ball pretty high but still Shoaib Malik managed to catch the ball."

McCullum feels there has been a lot of positive from the tour. "We need to take a lot of positives out of our performance. The one-day series went off really well. In Twenty20 our players showed a lot of character," said McCullum, who also regained his form with good knocks in the one-day as well as Twenty20 matches.