Pietersen has to watch another closing ceremony with India taking the plaudits
England captain Kevin Pietersen tried to lift his players' spirits after they fell 5-0 behind India in their best-of-seven one-day international series.
Pietersen made an unbeaten 111 but could not prevent his side falling to a six-wicket defeat in Cuttack.
"The team's improving and the guys are trying their hardest so it's a bitter pill to swallow," he told BBC Sport.
"We're just getting beaten by a better team. It's important to try to win one of the last two games."
With the series already out of their reach, England are playing for pride to try and regain momentum ahead of the two Test matches against India next month.
At the Barabati Stadium, with India openers Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar in blistering form, England's total of 270 always looked to be some way short of a truly competitive total.
"We got runs on the board, but unfortunately we got outplayed again at the top of the order by Sehwag and Tendulkar who played beautifully," said Pietersen.
"I'm not saying we bowled anything particularly special, but they played well."
India captain Mahendra Dhoni also paid tribute to the performance of Sehwag and Tendulkar, with the pair putting on 136 before the first wicket went down.
"Sehwag and Tendulkar gave us a start that we needed," said Dhoni.
"It was a pleasant sight to see Sehwag batting the way he does, while Tendulkar was rotating the strike while hitting boundaries in between."
Pietersen admitted some of his side's bowling had not been up to scratch.
"We basically needed to bowl them out because they still needed a big power-play," he said.
"We needed to be aggressive and that's what we tried to do. Unfortunately the first 20 overs didn't really go our way - if we'd bowled a lot better early on it would have been a lot easier for me."
But Dhoni said his bowlers had done him proud after a slow start to England's innings.
"We did not get the best of starts from the new-ball bowlers but in the middle overs the spinners did the job," he said.
"In the end, our bowlers did a splendid job as they restricted England to 270 when they looked like getting 300."
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