THAT has to be one of the toughest losses, if not the toughest, of my professional career.
Oman played a great game, and while I’m not trying to take anything away from their performance, we should certainly be beating them day in, day out.
We got off the mark well with both bat and ball, but we made some crucial errors where it counted.
To say I’m gutted after the loss is an understatement.
Paul Stirling got us off to a flyer with the bat and he looked in great form, before he was caught at cover. It’s no doubt going to be in contention for one of the catches of the tournament.
We fell short in posting a substantial score. We should have reached about 165/170, which is what is required on a good pitch.
Oman's opening batsmen came out firing and put us under pressure from the start. We fought and scrapped, particularly Kevin O’Brien, who was excellent with the ball and picked up two crucial top order wickets.
For a while we got back in the game, but that didn’t last long. We gave away some wides, no balls and one that snuck past me cost us dearly.
You can't help but feel that you’ve let your team and country down when you make an error, and there are many of us tonight who feel very low.
How do we move on from here? Well, it’s fairly simple.
We need to win our two games against Bangladesh and the Netherlands, and win them well, in order to get through to the next round on net run rate.
It's a bit of a long shot, but it’s all we’ve got to cling onto at the moment. So, we have to pull our socks up and hold our heads high and make sure that we get the job done.
It's not going to be easy, but we have no time to mope around. We’ve got two games in the space of three days.
Bangladesh got off to a winning start [against Netherlands] and looked to be playing in very confident mood. They performed well in the Asia Cup tournament so they’ll be expected to progress through the group.
Hopefully, we’ll put them under some pressure and secure the win we need.
It's all about how you react in sport and it will be a real test of our resolve to ensure we bounce back quickly.
