WE’RE very disappointed to have been eliminated from the Unicorns Knockout Trophy and miss out on a place in the quarter-finals.

We managed to beat Devon in our last game and, in all honesty, before the game we thought that would be enough.

Cornwall were top of our group and we thought they would beat Wales, so if we could do a job on Devon then that would be it.

But as it turned out it fell into Wales’ hands as they went away to Cornwall and beat them. You just have to hold your hands up and say fair play to them.

For the last couple of days I’ve been trying to work out how we haven’t qualified but losing to Wales in the first game is what has cost us the chance of getting through to the next round.

Although we won two games - and had one abandoned - it’s probably down to that Wales game and the run rate there.

That meant our net run rate overall was not strong and that’s because, although we scored runs in the first couple of games, we did not bat the overs and that’s what these competitions come down to.

I did stress that to the guys all along and although we did bat through the 50 overs this time, that’s the first time we have done it. We have got to make sure we do that more, so we will put a high emphasis on that next year.

In terms of the Devon game itself, the boys came back strongly after quite a difficult start.

Devon’s opening bowling spells were pretty good and it was difficult to score and the guys struggled a little bit and we ended up being 35-5.

The middle order didn’t fire but it was a good innings in the middle from Ed Young, who scored a fabulous century, and Michael Bates and also Jake Roberts at the end.

That got us out of a lot of trouble and to post a score of 233 when you are up against it at 35-5 was a pretty good effort in the end.

We bowled really well throughout their innings and they always seemed to be just a little bit behind the run-rate.

We took early wickets which is always pretty useful and puts them behind the eight ball.

It was a good all-round team performance so I was pretty happy with the result overall, it was just a pity it didn’t mean more.