PROVIDENCE, March 31: England captain Michael Vaughan said his team needed to find a more ruthless streak after struggling to beat debutants Ireland in their first World Cup Super Eights game on Friday.

England have five matches approaching in the second stage of the tournament and all against Test opposition. They next play 1996 champions Sri Lanka in Antigua on Wednesday.

“Very rarely do you play a 100 percent game and at the minute we're playing at about 80 percent,” Vaughan told reporters. “I'd like to see us playing a bit more than that.”

Although Vaughan knows his side have more improvements to make, he was relieved to get points on the board.

They lost to New Zealand in Group C so took no points through to the next stage.

“We just needed to win the match and take the two points,” he said. “There are obviously areas where we need to improve but there are also areas where we were very good as well.

“It would have been nice to nail home the Irish when we had them six down and when we had got the rate to 11 an over, but that wasn't to be and they played well and we just didn't quite get it right for a few overs.”

Ireland reflected on their defeat by ruing missed opportunities after they started brightly.

“Flintoff was coming to the crease and in my opinion he's the best all-rounder in the world and Collingwood was still there so we had to break that partnership quick smart,” Ireland skipper Trent Johnston told reporters.

“But we knew if we could get a bit of luck or if someone could do something special we could have broken that partnership and limited them to 200 or 210.

“That would have been very much an achievable total so I think we will learn from that.”—Reuters