NEW DELHI: Aiden Markram, the captain of South Africa, expressed relief at making it to the T20 World Cup semifinals, but he also pointed out that the Proteas made a mistake in trying to wrap up the chase against the West Indies too quickly, which resulted in an unconvincing victory in Antigua.
It was a good effort by South Africa to hold the two-time champions to 135/8. Rain delayed play for nearly an hour, but the Proteas responded by winning 15/2 in two overs.
The South African batsmen took advantage of the rain-induced improvement in batting conditions and the lowered revised target of 123 to attack the target head-on, but they continued to lose wickets as the hosts tightened the situation. But in the end, Makram and his crew managed to finish the job.
"A lot of relief to get through to the semifinal. Not going to be brain-washed by that. We would have liked to be more convincing with bat in hand," Markram said at the post match presentation, according to PTI.
"After the rain break, the wicket was playing nicely. We did not get the partnerships to then kill the game. Tried to kill it (the chase) too early, it put us in a tricky position. (The win) is massive for us and fantastic for the change room."
Markram is hoping that his team will learn from the nerve-wracking victory.
"We bowled really well, assessed conditions and kept them to a sub-par total. We could have built a partnership after the break and then take it from there, we will take that learning and hopefully not do that same mistake again."
Markram chose to bowl wrist spinner Tabraiz Shamsi (3/27), Keshav Maharaj (1/24) and himself (1/28) while utilizing pace spearheads Kagiso Rabada and Marco Jansen for two overs each because the wicket was helping the spinners.
"We picked Shamsi to have a mystery spinner against them and immediately saw it spinning, 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.
"We have been doing really well, the bowling unit is firing and as a batting unit it is about when to take the game on. We need to be smart on those situations."
