England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff admits he was left with a "bad taste" following England's 16-run Duckworth-Lewis defeat to India in Kapur.

Fading light at Green Park stadium saw the match brought to an end nine overs prematurely with India marginally ahead of the required rate.

With darkness rapidly fading at around 4.15pm local time in India at this time of year, Flintoff was left baffled as to why the game was reduced by just one over per side after 45 minutes of play had been lost at the start of the match.

"It was a frustrating end, you practice for two days building up to it, you go out there and you've got a sniff of winning it and everyone has given it everything they've got, and to end the way it did was a bit of a bad taste," Flintoff told Sky Sports 1.

"We lost some time and we lost just one over, and it's got dark the same time everyday so it's a bizarre scenario that we didn't get the game in.

"As you can imagine in the changing room the lads are down at the moment.

"By no means were we favourites at the end, but two quick wickets and we were right back in it and we thought we could pull something off."

A promising 79-run opening partnership between promoted opener Ravi Bopara (60) and Ian Bell (46) plus a usful contribution from Owais Shah (40) saw England post 240 after winning the toss.

A total, in reflection, which was 30 or 40 runs too few according to the again-impressive Flintoff.

"I think par on that wicket would have been about 260-265 but we had 240 on the board and we thought we had a chance of defending it," he said.

"We had to be aggressive, we had to hit them hard and take wickets up front which we did and obviously the big one was Yuvraj (Singh).

"When we got Yuvraj out if we had nicked (Mahendra Singh) Dhoni we would have got into the tail and had a chance, but you can fault the lads for the effort they showed today.

"We are getting closer to India - we have got a mountain to climb but we have got no choice, we are going to have to go out there and play.

"We are disappointed at the moment but we have got four games to play and we have got to win all four.

"It's not going to be easy but we have got to believe we can do it and we have got a chance to do something special."

"30 or 40 more runs today and it could have been a different story."

India captain Dhoni always thought conditions at the ground would mean the match would be decided on the Duckworth-Lewis method.

"We knew that it would come in to play here, especially with the weather in this venue. It gets dark after 4.15pm," he said.

"I had a sheet in my pocket to check to see how we were doing on the method.

"We knew we had one more powerplay to go so we knew if we didn't lose a couple of wickets then we'd be okay.

"The important thing is that we win the series. Until we win the fourth match we have not won so we have to keep going."