Moores rues mistakes

Steve Harmison lets the pressure get to him after being hit for 22 in an over

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England coach Peter Moores admitted his team were dealt an expensive lesson after they lost the winner-takes-all Stanford 20/20 for 20 showdown.

Kevin Pietersen’s team slumped to their lowest Twenty20 score, hitting just seven fours between them in a disappointing 99, and were beaten by 10 wickets with 44 balls unused.

England’s players found it difficult to unclutter minds questioning a pioneering venture of representing your country and chasing one-million-dollars-a-man in the process.

There was no such dichotomy for the Stanford Superstars as captain Chris Gayle emphasised the difference on the night, winning the match by launching Andrew Flintoff for six.

“We are going to go to India now and have we learned a lesson? We have probably learned a very expensive lesson if I am being honest,” said Moores.

“You can never get off the focus of the game and we played against a very hungry, disciplined side.

“All credit to the lads, what they wanted to do was keep their integrity and not in any way let it be portrayed that they were just playing for the cash.”

Their failure to get near their previous low of 135 against Australia in 2007 would not have been a good advertisement as cricket attempts to branch into the American television market, however.

“One thing I know about the players is that they are desperate to play for the badge,” Moores added.

“Every time you play for England it is about playing for England but the whole issue of money was in people’s heads.

“Maybe that didn’t hit some of the guys really until after the game was played. People talk about focus in sport and I don’t know if we were as absolutely clear as we could have been.

“The hurting part is that we got absolutely nailed in an international game playing for England. That hurt. As it should do.

“We didn’t pitch up and play the kind of cricket we can and that was disappointing. People talked about whether this game was for England, was it for money, what was it about?

Andre Fletcher sinks to his knees as Chris Gayle hits the winnings runs for the Stanford Superstars

“In international, top-flight sport you can’t afford to have any grey area about what you are doing. You have to be very clear as a team and as individuals what you are doing and why you are doing it.”

Several of England’s top-order, captain Pietersen among them, were dismissed in a flurry of failed improvisations, which contrasted sharply to the Superstars’ approach.

While the visiting batsmen opted to walk around in the crease and heave across the line, Gayle and Andre Fletcher emphasised the value in hitting orthodox strokes with extreme power.

Both could have been run-out in the infancy of their innings but England, requiring early wickets to have any chance in the $20million encounter, spurned each opportunity.

Twenty-year-old Fletcher, one of the finds of Stanford’s involvement in Caribbean cricket, responded emphatically to the let-offs with three fours in the second over, sent down by Stuart Broad, to provide the home team with some early momentum.

Within an hour, he was down on his knees as Gayle ploughed the ball into the crowd at long-on and his team-mates hurdled onto the field top begin the celebrations.

Pietersen, humble in defeat, said: “To see a guy fall over in front of me at the end of the game, crying, with a million dollars in his bank account, was absolutely fantastic.

“I am a human being and these guys are fellow professionals - quite a few of them are a lot less privileged than I am - and to see them so happy was wonderful.

“We blame ourselves for our performance because we are professionals and we should have dealt with stuff a lot better.

“The West Indies guys have been here for six weeks, they did a fantastic job, so hats off to them. They wanted it so much, they had their plans right and we were outplayed by a team which was more hungry.

“You bump your head and you learn from it. We bumped our heads.”