Vettori blames batting for New Zealand woes

By Richard Sydenham

NOTTINGHAM, England (Reuters) - New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori blamed batting failures for his team's disappointing Twenty20 World Cup in which they won only two games against second-tier nations.

New Zealand exited the tournament after a 48-run loss to Sri Lanka on Tuesday. Although they were one win from the semi-finals, the Kiwis only beat Scotland and Ireland and lost to semi-finalists South Africa and West Indies.

They were hampered by injury problems with Vettori, Ross Taylor and Jesse Ryder missing matches but the skipper was not looking for excuses.

"We've been helped with a fortunate draw that allowed us to beat only two associate teams and still have a chance of making the semi-finals," Vettori told reporters.

"We were as full strength as we could be without Jesse. We're devastated but injuries were not the reason we lost to Sri Lanka.

"It's definitely not good enough, we were fortunate to have only beaten those two and still be in a position to make the semi-finals. That probably wasn't right but that's the way it turned out.

"We just didn't get the runs," he added. "Our highest score in the three important games against South Africa, Pakistan and Sri Lanka was 127. And if you look at the scores over the tournament that is nowhere near par and therefore we never gave ourselves a chance."

Vettori said fatigue was not a reason even though some of his leading players featured in the Indian Premier League directly before the Twenty20 World Cup.