Streak wants his players to "feel hurt"

Zimbabwe captain Heath Streak sought to draw some positives from his team's narrow three-run defeat in the VB tri-series match against India and said he wanted his players to "feel hurt" at having come so far and yet managed to lose.

"In a way, you want your guys to feel hurt and try and win more matches. We needed just that one per cent extra to be a better team tonight. We must learn to cross the line," said Streak after his side blew up a certain winning chance.

"There was almost disbelief in the dressing room. At one stage when Sean Ervine and Stuart Carlisle were going great guns, we were hugging each other in the dressing room. It was a great feeling, then everything went flat."

Streak said in a way a defeat by only three runs was difficult to accept. "It was difficult to accept it in a sense because it was a close margin rather than a big one."

The Zimbabwean captain rated the run-out of Sean Ervine as the turning point of the match and claimed it was not easy for a newcomer to hit boundaries straightaway.

"The run-out of Ervine was the big moment for us. Then we kept losing wickets. It wasn't easy for a newcomer to get used to the state of the pitch and start making runs straightaway," Streak explained.

Streak praised his middle order batsmen but said the top order was still not giving the start which is needed.

"It feels good that number four and five batsmen were able to get centuries but we are still not getting the start we want. We lost early wickets and were always playing the catch-up thereafter."

Streak also bemoaned the missed chances against India, saying the run-out and the catch which went abegging against Laxman proved costly.

"We didn't take our chances. We missed a catch and a run-out, a costly lapse. It allowed them to get their momentum back."

"As for Laxman he is in a rare kind of form. You can hardly do anything than to keep plugging away," he said.