Angelo Mathews saved praised for England after seeing his Sri Lankan charges succumb to another defeat, this time by 122 runs in the ODI series finale in Cardiff.
Mathews, who pledged not to run away from the national team's captaincy despite a run of poor results, admitted his side had not been at their best throughout the Royal London international series.
Speaking to the media after today's game, in which Sri Lanka were bowled out for 202 in pursuit of England's 324/7, Mathews saw lots of room for improvement.
He said: "We've not played our best cricket, in the past two months we've been having the same problem: either the batting, bowling or fielding has been letting us down in each game and we needed a perfect game to beat England.
"We didn't have the perfect game and we paid the price. Congratulaitons to England, they put us under a lot of pressure and they outplayed us in all three departments."
Mathews noticed the huge strides made by the England side under the combined stewardship of Eoin Morgan and Trevor Bayliss in the past 12 months or so.
England have been reinvigorated since being knocked out of the 2015 World Cup by Bangladesh, with a new breed of positive cricketers such as Jason Roy, David Willey and Jos Buttler leading the way.
Mathews added: "A few years back England were in the same situaiton as us but they've stuck to their plans and their players and now they're seeing the results. They've been playing some fantastic cricket and they're very hard to beat in England and very competitve outside England as well."
The Sri Lankan allrounder then vowed to stick by his side and lead them out of a rough run of form, with lots of young players by his side.
"They'll be good times as well as tough times," he concluded. "This is a tough time for me as captain as well as the team. You can't run away from it (the captaincy) and I'm pretty sure if we keep improving day by day we can come out of this hole as soon as possible."
Sri Lanka finish their tour of England with an international T20 at The Ageas Bowl on Tuesday where they will hope to salvage their first victory of the summer.