Brendon McCullum, the England white-ball coach, said his team was “gutted” after losing a second consecutive game in the ongoing tri-series that they had a firm grip over, but acknowledged that they had some work to do in the format in the build-up to next year’s World Cup.

After failing to defend 429 against Sri Lanka in Rawalpindi, England had Pakistan on the mat at 154 for 9 in Lahore in a defence of 241 - a score that McCullum admitted was below par. But the bowlers failed to close out the game again as Shadab Khan’s sensational unbeaten 113 orchestrated a last-wicket heist in the company of Haris Rauf to give England a rude shock.

When asked if he thought England were unlucky or just not good enough after two close defeats, McCullum was affirmative of the latter and reckoned that England needed to tackle crunch situations better.

“Any time you lose, you obviously haven't been good enough to win. So clearly you've got some work to do,” McCullum told reporters after the game. “It's so different, the [two] games as well. I guess from a coach's point of view there is some stuff in there that you can look at and say these guys have been exposed to some very different types of games where the pressure is really at its highest.

“And you start thinking about ways where you can ensure that you give them some options. And not just in terms of how to bat, bowl or field, but also how do we remain calm, how do we keep our poise and how do we start to plot and plan and navigate our way through those pressure moments. So that will be the conversations we will have in the next few days.”

McCullum further stressed on the need for his players to benefit with more experience. From the XI that took the field on Sunday, only four players - Joe Root, Sam Curran, Gus Atkinson and skipper Harry Brook - have played an ODI World Cup game.

“I think for our boys, they are inexperienced. And we know that on the calendar in 12 months’ time there's a big World Cup which for us to be serious challengers at, we've been open to admit that we need to get better. And we need to get experiences into these guys as quick as we could,” he said.

McCullum stated it would have been better had those experiences come in winning causes, but declared that there were useful learnings from the two recent defeats for England to learn from - be it constructing a steep chase like Sri Lanka did in Rawalpindi, or turning a chase around like Pakistan did on Sunday.

“I thought it [tonight] was another great lesson for us… if you are behind the game and you're chasing, how are you able to manufacture a way for your set batter to get as much access to the ball as possible and still remain calm, and ultimately put the opposition under pressure down the back end of the game.

“So there are some good lessons there. There's some good learning opportunities. And we will learn from it. Because we are desperate to get to South Africa and be a realistic chance of challenging for that World Cup,” he said.

McCullum also found takeaways for England’s younger players from Shadab’s knock - only the third hundred in an ODI from a batter at No. 8.

“I thought it was an incredibly poised innings that was full of cricket intelligence,” McCullum said. “And also I thought his ability to be able to manipulate his way to get enough access to the ball as he could, batting alongside the tail, was a great example for our boys who are still young and inexperienced.”

Having lost all three games so far, England’s fate is out of their hands as far as qualifying for the final is concerned. They will need to beat Sri Lanka on Tuesday and hope for Pakistan to do them a favour a couple of days later, with net run-rate then coming into picture.