Gaby Lewis says there is no excuses to be made after a dramatic defeat by West Indies eliminated Ireland from the T20 World Cup on Friday.
The defeat ended any faint hopes of progression and leaves Ireland with three defeats from as many matches.
“I just don’t think we were good enough on the day,” said Lewis.
“I don’t think there’s any excuses to be made. I think. We’ll go back to training, like we just can’t field like that. So I guess doing things more under pressure, but like there’s no excuses with lights. We’ve played numerous games under lights.
“We’re not a team to make excuses. We’ll just go back to the drawing board and come out again on Sunday.”
Ireland were hoping to record their first ever T20 World Cup win, having lost all of their previous 14 matches, and were favourites at the halfway mark as Orla Prendergast and Lewis recorded a 90-run partnership.
Despite being 115-2 after 15 overs, Ireland added just 22 more runs for seven wickets across the final 30 deliveries.
West Indies’ Matthews was dropped on nine by Amy Hunter at backward point in the fifth over and it was an error which proved to be costly.
Needing two runs from the final two deliveries Matthews carved Ireland skipper Laura Delany through the covers for four to end West Indies’ 15-match T20 international losing streak.
‘We want to compete with the top sides’
Lewis added that it is “not great” that Ireland were knocked out so early and said that “we just have to be better in the field”.
“I think with the bat, we definitely left at least 20 to 30 runs out there in the back end. I think we got a great start,” Lewis said.
“I think obviously it didn’t help that myself or Orla [were dismissed], you’d want one of us to be in there at the end.
“It’s not up to our lower order to score all the runs. I think we missed a trick there with us getting out at the kind of critical times.
“We want to compete with top sides. We can’t give chances and we’ve just got to be better in the field.”
Ireland finish their campaign against India on Monday and Lewis feels more games against the top nations will help Ireland progress in the future.
“We obviously have England right next to us and that [World Cup opener on Monday] was the first time we’ve played them in many years.
“It seems to be the big three and the big four playing against each other. The more that they can get the lower teams involved, the better the cricket in general we’ll get.
“We have had an increase in games being in the championship, which has been brilliant. That’s definitely been a step forward for us.
“I think the more countries that can get into that, the better. That does come down to playing against those teams and not underestimating the ability of the lower ranked teams.”