JOHN Morris lay the blame at the feet of his senior players as Derbyshire fell woefully short of matching Glamorgan last night.

Even though it was a weakened and quite youthful Phantoms' line-up for the game at Sophia Gardens, the head of cricket believed there were still enough experienced campaigners available to push the home side a lot closer.

"It would be easy to say we had a young side out there who will only get better for playing in games like this, we hope, but that's no consolation for us when we have players in that dressing room who need to do better for us," said Morris.

"There's a lot we can say as an excuse but I'm not that sort of person because we didn't do enough things right to deserve to win the game.

"We've not performed and that's the disappointing thing. We've been beaten badly here.

"We got bogged down with the bat and didn't score off enough balls.

"There were a couple of good bowlers out there – Croft is a tradesman and Gillespie bowled well – but we let them bowl.

"We didn't go about trying to win the game properly and the pressure was then on the lower order and the tail.

"If the top order doesn't score at four or five an over, you can't expect the tail to score at eights and nines.

"What we talked about in the dressing room after the game was to look at how they went about it, through Wallace and Dalrymple, who knocked the ball around and ran us to death to build a partnership.

"We never did that and that's basic stuff. If I'm going to have to explain that to players, we're in for a long haul."

To add to Morris' problems, there was an injury setback for seam bowler Tom Lungley, who felt a pain in his side again bowling in the nets on the morning of the game.

Lungley only returned to the team last week after more than two months out with a torn muscle in his side. He could be set for another spell on the sidelines if it proves to be more than a niggle.