England captain Eoin Morgan has refused to blame Ben Stokes for his side's World Twenty20 final defeat at the hands of the West Indies.
Stokes was given the ball for the final over in Kolkata with the Windies needing 19 runs to win, a target which Carlos Brathwaite reached in style by smashing four consecutive sixes.
However, Morgan believes that it was their batting that let them down having set their opponents a target of just 155 to chase down.
"Cricket can be a cruel game. This is not Ben's fault, we're all in this together. But it's quite simple from my point of view - he is going to be devastated. It'll take its toll in the next couple of days but we share everything we do, we stick together as a side," he told reporters.
"We share pain, we share the success. I hope in the future we have a lot more success and, personally, I think we will have but tonight we share the pain. I'm not quite sure what I'm feeling at the moment... not sure it's actually happened.
"First and foremost I can't fault anything we did with the ball or in the field. But we let ourselves down tremendously with the bat. I thought we were terrible. We were probably 40 short, it was a 180-190 wicket. There were huge highs and lows for us but we didn't have enough runs on the board."
Joe Root (54) top-scored for England, while Jos Buttler (36) was the only other player to score higher than 21.
Barney Corkhill
