The team captain of South Africa, Aiden Markram, breathed a sigh of relief as they made it to the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup. However, he also emphasized that trying to finish off the chase in a hurry against West Indies was a mistake by Proteas and this led to an unconvincing victory for them in Antigua.
It was a commendable effort by South Africa as they restricted the two-time champions to 135/8. Rain interrupted play for nearly an hour but Proteas responded by scoring 15/2 in two overs.
South African batters capitalized on improved batting conditions due to rains and revised target which had been reduce to123 straightaway. However, they kept on losing wickets while hosts encapsulated their situation. But eventually Makram’s team saw it over.
“Relief-immeasurable from reaching semifinal at this stage. Would not be taken by their words for granted. We should have won with more conviction when we were with bat,”. Markram said according to PTI reports after the match.
“The pitch played well after rain stoppage; if we could have had some partnerships to then kill the game from there. We tried killing it too early (the chase). Thus got ourselves into trouble (win) is really massive for us and unbelievable for change room.”
Markram hopes that this harrowing win will teach his boys something.
“We bowled really well, assessed conditions and kept them down at below par score line. Building a partnership after break could have helped us and then take it from there. We will take that learning and hopefully not do that same mistake again.”
For example, Markram opted for wrist spinner Tabraiz Shamsi (3/27), Keshav Maharaj (1/24) and himself (1/28) using pace spearheads Kagiso Rabada and Marco Jansen two overs each because spinners were being favor by the pitch.
“We got Shamsi, who is a mystery spinner against them and immediately saw it spin. So we wanted to bowl as much spin as we can. If it wouldn’t spun that much then we would have used our pacers, not a lot of times when KG bowls only 2 overs.
“The bowling unit has been doing really well, the batting unit about when to take the game on. We need to be smart on those situations.”
