IT may have been nearly a week since our embarrassing defeat to Ireland — but we are all still hurting.

That was a result that should never have happened and we can’t blame anyone but ourselves.

The manner of that defeat has cut us deeply and everyone in our dressing room is hurting.

But we can’t dwell on it. We can’t allow that match to affect the rest of our season.

There can be no excuses from any of us for what happened. We had a quarter-final place in the Friends Provident Trophy waiting for us and we blew it.

The thing for the team now is how we recover and how long it takes to do so.

It is going to be very difficult, but make no mistake we will be working as hard as we can to repair the damage that has been done.

We have to pick ourselves up for the Twenty20 Cup and give our all. We as players can apologise all we want for what happened last Wednesday, but the only way to show how sorry we are is out on the pitch by putting in winning performances.

We should have been playing on Saturday, but instead we were in for training and getting ourselves ready for Twenty20 cricket.

Over the past few seasons we know that we have not covered ourselves in glory in that competition and that is something we are all keen to put right.

We have been working on new tactics and new formulas for this season’s competition and hopefully we can get the right results.

There is a different skill level to playing Twenty20 from other forms of cricket and this year, after what has just happened, the whole changing room wants to right our past wrongs.

This year’s competition is played in two blocks, whereas last year the group stages were played over a two-week period.

We are not sure how that will affect us going into the final group matches as we would have played two County Championship games in between.

That could affect our rhythm, but what we have to make sure is that we are prepared properly and focusing our efforts on every single game.

For the first part of the Twenty20 Cup we are likely to be without pace bowler Kabir Ali.

To be missing Kabs in any game is a massive blow. He is recovering well from his hamstring injury and I know that he is champing at the bit to get back.

The good news is that he is looking fitter and stronger than he has ever been.

Kabir is raring to go and, hopefully, it won’t be too long before the medical team give him the all-clear.