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India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni tried to put up a brave face after the team’s embarrassing exit from the World Twenty20, saying the players had done their best, even if the results had not been good.

“Whenever we go out there we try to do well. But you won’t do well every time. We tried our best and did whatever we could have, but we still ended up being on the losing side,” Dhoni said after India’s five-wicket loss to Sri Lanka on Tuesday knocked them out of the event. Dhoni said this was the best Twenty20 side that India could field.

“We are not performing to our potential. I can’t say why. But at the end of the day, this is the best T20 side we have. It gets tough without players like Virender (Sehwag), Zaheer Khan (he suffered a blow on his right thumb) and Praveen Kumar,” he said.

Asked if the Indians’ vulnerability to the rising ball proved to be their downfall, Dhoni admitted that Indian batsmen had a technical problem when it came to playing the short ball. “Most of us have a problem with playing short-pitched balls.

So it is not just the youngsters who had problems. We can’t neglect it any more. But we don’t have bowlers who consistently bowl at 145-150 kph and most of wickets in India don’t have that kind of bounce,” he said.

“But we should also remember that we are good players of spin. So we shouldn’t be ashamed that we can’t play short-pitched bowling. We have to play even against short-pitched but we can’t be ducking and leaving all the time in Twenty20.”

Dhoni rejected criticism of the team and said he is least affected by what is said about it. “As far as the sloganeering goes, I am not bothered about that. We try and do our best. We play for our country and we are more respectful to our country than those who do these sort of things. They can do whatever they want to,” fumed Dhoni. After having received flak for bowling first twice on a bouncy Barbados track, Dhoni said he did not regret batting first in St Lucia.

“I don’t really regret batting first. If we had chased 150 batting second, it would not have been less than 10 runs an over, which is tough. Defending 163 was difficult. We fell short by a few runs. Had we scored 180 or more, the target (to leapfrog Sri Lanka on the net run-rate) would have been 160-170 and that would have been a good target to defend,” he said.

On whether he was feeling the pressure of captaincy, Dhoni said, “You are always under pressure when you play for India. It is part-and-parcel of the game. I have not played any game till now where there is no pressure.”

Notwithstanding the debacle in the World T20, Dhoni said he had faith in his side. “I have a side with lot of potential to do well, wherever we play. We had two or three poor tournaments. But other than that we have been consistent,” said Dhoni.