Leeds: England captain Alastair Cook expressed satisfaction after his side's 41-run win over India in the fifth One-day International here, but was also concerned that this was yet another ODI series loss for them.
India won the five-match series 3-1 despite the loss in the inconsequential match on friday.
"We badly needed to win this. It becomes slightly frustrating because if you play like that, you'll win a lot more games. We did a lot of things very well, and a lot of things we know we had to do and haven't been doing in previous games, like one of those guys, top four or five going on and getting a big score, and then the others can support him. I thought we played nicely with the bat, and 300 was always a good score on that wicket," Cook said.
"The bottom line is we have lost a series. It's nice to win today. I'd rather win the World Cup than win this series. We've got a great opportunity as a side now, for six months to work on our one-day game," he added.
Joe Root hit his second ODI hundred 113 runs as the hosts scored their highest total of the series, racking up 294/7 in their 50 overs.
"Root was obviously the difference. You can get two or three guys getting 20, 30s and 40s if someone else goes on and gets a hundred off 100 balls. You can speak about it enough, and get told you've got the wrong tactics. But it's not the wrong tactics. It's just people not doing their job very well. We haven't done that for three games, but we did today," said the English skipper.
"After the first couple of games, Root learned from that and he'll learn from this hundred. But it was a fantastic hundred, to score a run-a-ball on that wicket. You saw a lot of the other guys struggle to do that. He played beautifully. If we do that, we're a tough side to beat," he added.
