Monday 2 March 2015 11:27, UK
Eoin Morgan admitted England's bowlers were "way off the mark" as Sri Lanka chased down 310 to win their World Cup meeting.
Joe Root's hundred helped England to 309-6 in Wellington, but their opponents won by nine wickets thanks to unbeaten hundreds from Lahiru Thirimanne and Kumar Sangakkara.
Morgan's side have been beaten by all three full member nations they have faced in Pool A, and their quarter-final hopes now rest on their remaining games against Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
England have picked the same four seam bowlers in every game so far, and in the aftermath of another hammering the captain was asked whether his attack had become too predictable.
He told Sky Sports' World Cup channel: "Here I think we bowled a bad ball every one, one and a half overs, which, at this level you get punished for, and we were punished today by a very experienced side.
"We've got variations in two tall bowlers who get bounce when they bowl well, and two swing bowlers when they bowl well but today we were way off the mark.
"When we're bowling well it's a good attack but you can pick it apart when it's not bowling well, and today we didn't bowl well.
"We bowled a lot of bad balls. Over the next couple of days we'll get the HawkEye stuff back and the proof will be in that. My feeling is we bowled a lot of bad balls."
Morgan said the result was "harder to take" than earlier heavy defeats to Australia and New Zealand but insisted there were "positives" in his side's batting performance.
And the skipper would not contemplate an early exit, saying: "It's not even a thought at the moment Two games to win to get us into a quarter-final.
"It's not a big deal getting those guys up. It's a World Cup - everybody is like a kid at Christmas. They want to play and they want to win. That part of it is easy.
"It's simple things moving forward. I keep banging on about them because we haven't done them so far this World Cup. The simpler we keep it moving forward, the more obvious what we do or have to do over the next 10 days. That will be the message from me to the players."
Watch every World Cup match live on Sky Sports' World Cup channel.