The head coach conceded that his side were simply not good enough with the bat at Bready CC in Northern Ireland as they suffered a five-wicket loss to a USA team who, prior to the encounter, had failed to win a match at the ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier.
Jersey were dismissed for just 87 runs, from 17.3 overs; a total the United States chased down with five wickets and 26 deliveries in hand.
MacRae takes his team south to Dublin today, where he wants to see his players ‘put the record straight’ against Namibia tomorrow.
‘The main focus for us now is to hit the standards we know we are capable of hitting,’ said the Scot.
‘There are lessons to be learned but we need to put that performance behind us quickly and move on to Namibia.
‘We’ve got the quality in this team; we just need to rediscover the form that enabled us to beat Hong Kong.
‘We didn’t bat well enough today. Some things didn’t go our way but we didn’t bat as well as we know we can and we got ourselves in a position, at five or six wickets down, that we couldn’t come back from.
‘We fought back well in the field but had an off-day with the bat. There are lessons to be learned but we need to put that performance behind us quickly and move on to Namibia.’
Put in to bat by their opponents, Jersey failed to post a competitive total as they were bowled out for an inadequate 87.
Attempting to defend such a meagre total, the European Division I champions were unable to snatch the early wicket they surely needed if they were going to pull off an unlikely triumph, as USA reached 57 for 0 from ten overs.
Although wickets did fall – Nat Watkins taking three of them – it was too little, too late for the Islanders as they slumped to their second successive defeat.
Despite watching Jersey fail to bat through their allotted 20 overs – for the second time in their three tournament fixtures – MacRae says his side will continue to attack with the bat.
‘We’ve got quality at the top of our order,’ he continued.
‘We’ll certainly continue to play the same style of attacking cricket but there are lessons to be learned about how we adjust to what our opposition are doing.
‘We still believe in the batters we’ve got and it’s absolutely crucial the batters retain belief in themselves.
‘We are aware that sometimes you need to be patient but it wasn’t a case of us trying to hit every ball out of park from the off. You still need to attack otherwise you don’t put a competitive score on the board but we need to learn to be more selective with the balls we can attack.’
‘It’s good that we don’t have too long to dwell … we’ve got three games in a row now so we have to put right what didn’t happen today.’
Now standing sixth in Group A – and with just the top four teams progressing to the knock-out stages – Jersey need to get back to winning ways sooner rather than later. Notwithstanding the pressure created by the necessity for a change in fortunes, MacRae says he and his team are not looking beyond tomorrow’s match at Clontarf.
‘We want to bounce back as quickly as possible but we won’t be focusing any further than that next match.
‘All results are still possible because it is a very even group. I suspect the placings will go down to the final group games but we need to win tomorrow to get ourselves back within striking distance of those top four places.’
Elsewhere, Papua New Guinea secured an unlikely two-wicket defeat of hosts Ireland, while Hong Kong notched their first success of the tournament – a five wicket win over Nepal.
