Pettini on what went wrong in major series (From Thurrock Gazette)

Pettini on what went wrong in major series

9:32am Friday 3rd July 2009

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Essex Skipper Mark Pettini said: "Our Twenty20 campaign came to a really sad end and I’ve had lots of people asking me what went wrong.

Well, we should have gone into the final match against Hampshire on Sunday having already qualified.

It was a lovely sunny day in front of a packed crowd, but we’d added extra pressure to the occasion by losing to Middlesex at Lord’s on Friday.

It’s been a long and interrupted competition this season, with the World Twenty20 and Ashes depriving us of key players.

Despite that, we still had a squad that should have qualified.

That we didn’t wasn’t just down to us losing our last two matches.

The competition was effectively split into three for us. The first stage was when we had our full team out and won two out of three games, with the third rain-affected.

The second stage saw us play three games in a week when we lost the likes of Napes, Ravi, Fozzie and Tendo to the World Cup and we only won once.

So we then needed to win three of the last four matches and we only won twice.

Somewhere along the line we should have already qualified so the last game would not have mattered.

However, we were guilty of not playing well enough during the critical moments throughout the competition. We needed to seize the moment and didn’t do it.

The games we won we did so convincingly, and then there were the games in the middle when the side was decimated.

I don’t think you can level any criticism at the players who came in to replace those who were away.

Varun Chopra came in at Lord’s and scored 50 when the rest of us struggled and you can’t just blame individuals – we take collective responsibility.

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