After their ignominious exit from the Twenty20 World Cup Australian skipper Ricky Ponting said they badly missed Andrew Symonds, whose absence affected the balance of his side.
Australia lost both of their league matches -- first to the West Indies and then to Sri Lanka last night -- to crash out of biennial extravaganza.
Cricket Australia had sent Symonds back home after the all-rounder breached the team discipline.
"It upset a lot of our structures around the team. He's one of the best individual players in this form of the game anywhere in the world, so when you lose someone like that out of your side it does throw a spanner in the works for sure," Ponting said.
The Australian skipper though was miffed at collective failure of his team.
"We're not going to use that as a reason or as an excuse. We had 14 other guys here that had to step up in his absence. We've been able to do that and good enough to do that in the past when we've lost some of our better players out of the side and over the last few days we haven't been good enough.
"I haven't actually heard any talk about Symo not being around over the last few days, so I would like to think that that hasn't played on the minds of any of our players.
"But when you lose someone of the quality and the calibre of him out of the T20 team, it certainly leaves a big hole," Ponting told AAP.