Alex Wakely was offering no excuses in the aftermath of the Steelbacks’ seven-wicket mauling at the hands of Somerset.
The emphatic defeat was the County’s fifth in as many outings and it leaves them rooted to the bottom of the Midlands/West/Wales division with their hopes of a quarter-final place now completely gone.
Yet again it was their batting that failed to a fire with a total of 115-6 way under par against a visiting side who demonstrated why they are favourites to lift the Friends Life t20 trophy.
And Wakely was at a loss to describe what is going wrong.
He said: “There’s no way of hiding from that really. It was the same story again, we didn’t give oursleves a chance when we were bowling.
“It’s easy to look at it in hindsight but we probably should’ve got a message back saying that we didn’t need the 160 or 170 that sometimes you want, it was probably a 140 or 150 wicket because we did find it quite difficult.
“We talk about it, we’re working and practicing but we just can’t figure out the secret why something’s not really gelling.”
The talk before the competition started was of locating some positive momentum but it is the reverse that has taken hold as Wakely acknowledged.
“As a captain I can’t ask for any more from the guys in the field and bowling but with the batting we’re not giving ourselves a chance,” he added.
“When we won five on the bounce in the one-dayers last year it’s just momentum, you go with it, you learn how to win.
“I’m struggling at the moment to give you a reason as to why that is.”
Next up is the visit of Warwickshire on Friday but Wakely isn’t sure whether there will be any significant changes.
He continued: “It’s difficult for me as a stand-in skipper to have too much influence in those kind of things.
“We’re going to sit down and thrash out what the problems are because if we don’t find them things are just going to happen the same.”