Rahul Dravid was left to reflect on a poor second innings batting performance after India's hopes of a series win in South Africa were dashed in Cape Town.
The Proteas won by five wickets in the final session to take the series 2-1.
"We should have set them 60 or 70 runs more than we did but didn't play well enough yesterday and they batted well in the first hour today," said Dravid.
"We are disappointed. After dominating for three days we could have ended up with a better result than we did."
The normally prolific Dravid's 47 in India's second innings was his highest score of a series in which he mustered only 125 runs at an average of 20.8.
Equally disappointing was the form of Virender Sehwag, who averaged only 14, and and only Wasim Jaffer scored a century for India in the three matches.
Dravid was happier with his bowlers and paid tribute the new ball pair of Shanthakumaran Sreesanth and Zaheer Khan, who shared 31 wickets in the series.
Zaheer claimed all three wickets to fall on the final day, but Sreesanth was unable to find similar penetration and add to his series tally of 18.
"Sreesanth has been a great success for us - both he and Zaheer bowled really well right thought the series and matched the South African pacers, which was a great effort.
"Tours like this can really help young quick bowlers and I hope he [Sreesanth] goes from strength to strength," Dravid commented.
India will now turn their attention to one-day cricket with home series against West Indies and Sri Lanka, while South Africa play host to Pakistan.
"We can take some positives from this Test series and move ahead. We've got eight one-day games before the World Cup and have got to get certain parts of our one-day game right. We'll be focusing on that," Dravid added.
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