It was tough watching the boys losing against India from the sidelines because I was very keen to play, although so was every one else in the squad!

    We lost that game in the last six overs of their innings, when they scored too many runs, and the first six overs of our innings, when we did not build up enough momentum.

    But it is something we have talked about and we will be doing our best to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

The loss in Port Elizabeth hurt the whole team and we need to get that game out of our systems by Friday. We have to turn things around as quickly as possible.

The amount of cricket we play these days you have to get over losses quickly and we have shown in the past that we can do that and I think we should be able to do it again this week.

We probably haven’t done as well as we wanted to on the previous weekends in the series. We have been good on the Fridays but not so good on the Sundays so hopefully this is another good Friday for us.

There is no doubt that a lack of hard, international match practise counted against us on Tuesday but we did everything we possibly could to prepare for the tournament and we certainly cannot have any excuses.

Sri Lanka came straight from a tough triangular series against India and New Zealand and they hit the ground running. It also helps that they have one of the most talented and well balanced squads in the tournament!

You are allowed to enjoy the occasion, and to admit that it is fantastic to be involved in an ICC World ‘event’. Sure, something might go wrong and we could be eliminated before the final, or even semi-finals, but that does not mean that we have not enjoyed the experience.

Every team, and every player, starts a tournament with the objective of winning. That’s why we are here. Even players from the smaller countries had their dreams. The players from Ireland still do!