• England

Cook: England dressing room a 'tough place to be'

Alastair Cook stated the England dressing room was emotional after another defeat to Australia © Getty Images

Enlarge

Alastair Cook has revealed the England dressing room is currently a "tough place to be" following another agonising one-day defeat to rivals Australia in Brisbane.

James Faulkner hit a stunning unbeaten innings of 69 from just 47 balls - including 25 runs off the last seven deliveries - to snatch a dramatic one-wicket victory for the hosts.

Eoin Morgan's brilliant knock of 106 helped England set a target of 301 for Australia. The visitors looked likely to gain their first victory in 84 days since arriving on tour, where they suffered a whitewash 5-0 Ashes series defeat, but Faulkner's heroics soon helped dampen spirits in the England camp.

Australia are now two-nil up in the five-match ODI series and captain Cook, who sent Morgan to attend the post-match press conference after the loss, admitted in the presentation that defeat was hard to swallow.

"It's an emotional dressing room right now and a pretty tough place to be, but when we look at it tomorrow morning in the cold light of day, it was an astonishing innings [from Faulkner] that beat us," Cook said.

"So we did a lot of good things here. Obviously I'll have to look at our last few overs but I'm proud of the way we got stuck in. But little things needed to go our way and they didn't."

Morgan, meanwhile, admitted the team were surprised at the result but indicated there were plenty of positives to take despite another defeat Down Under.

"[The] Guys probably shouldn't be as harsh as they will be on themselves," Morgan said. "Naturally they will be, but if you look through today's game we've done a lot of things right.

"It is quite tough. We let a good side come in at the end and we allowed them to play. We didn't finish as well as we would have liked. We're as surprised as anybody at the result. We let ourselves down a small bit. I think that can be said."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd