Melbourne Renegades paceman Dirk Nannes said Saturday's loss to the Melbourne Stars left him with a 'hollow feeling'.
In the first ever Melbourne derby in the KFC T20 Big Bash League, the Stars posted 5-167 from their 20 overs.
David Hussey (51) led the way for the Stars in front of a home crowd of over 40,000 fans before the Renegades innings was interrupted twice due to rain.
And that second pause saw the game forced to a premature end with the Renegades 3-58 after eight overs, which saw them 12 runs behind the Duckworth-Lewis target at the time.
"It's kind of a hollow feeling tonight when you don't get done fair and square," Nannes told reporters after the defeat.
"I guess you wonder 'what if?'. It's just disappointing it come out this way when you play to your plan."
The loss of openers Aaron Finch (1) and Brad Hodge (10) in the early stages of the Renegades' run-chase lifted their Duckworth-Lewis target noticeably.
And with drizzling rain continuing to fall, the Renegades knew they had to lift the run-rate to get ahead of their target.
But the likes of Jackson Bird (1-17 from three overs) and David Hussey (1-16 from two) kept things tidy and despite the efforts of Glenn Maxwell (28 from 24 balls), the losers were always slightly behind the par score.
Nannes admitted his team got the weather wrong but felt that they would have been able to chase the score if they batted 20 overs and had a set batsman at the crease.
"Maybe we were one or two wickets too many down but it doesn't really matter when you have a batting line up like we do," he said.
"Clear and simple we got the weather wrong. What can you do?"
"You look at the way we chased the other night (in the eight wicket-win over Sydney Sixers) and we would have been miles behind the rate."
"As long as you have a set batsman at the end you are going to be fine. You look who we had in the shed. We had (Abdul) Razzaq and (Shahid) Afridi still to come."
The Renegades now have two wins and three losses from their five matches and simply must win against the Brisbane Heat at Etihad Stadium on Thursday to keep their finals hopes alive.