South African cricket's latest white-ball choke could be the biggest of them all, coach Mark Boucher says.
The Proteas crashed out of the T20 World Cup with a shock 13-run loss to the unfancied Netherlands in Adelaide on Sunday.
Chasing a middling 159 to win and advance to the semi-finals, the nervy South Africans mustered just 8-145.
The stunning loss extends South Africa's white-ball World Cup misery, chiefly in the 50-over format where the four-time semi-finalists have never reached a final.
"The more you don't do well in World Cups, I think it does start playing with your head, that is just natural," a gutted Boucher told reporters.
The Proteas were infamously robbed by rain on return to international tournaments in 1992's 50-over World Cup semi-final.
They needed 22 from 13 balls to beat England, play halted because of a shower, and on resumption they required 21 from one delivery.
At the 50-over cup semi-final in 1999, South Africa required just one run from the last four balls to down Australia - they imploded, the game was tied, and they failed to advance.
At the 2003 cup, Boucher himself celebrated prematurely after thinking he'd hit the runs which sent his nation into the knockout stage: they'd miscalculated and were one run short when rain stopped play.
Boucher was appointed head coach in 2019 and Sunday's game against the Netherlands was his last in charge.
Asked if was the worst loss of them all, he replied: "Probably as a coach, yes.
"Each one is an individual event," he said.
"I know that there is a lot of history behind South African cricket and World Cups.
"If you would have said to us that we have got the Netherlands to play to get into a semi-final and got to beat them, we would have taken that at the start of the tournament.
"These things happen. It's not the only upset that has happened in the tournament.
" ... on paper, yes, we should have won the game. But the game is not played on paper."
Rubbing salt in the Proteas' open wounds, they caved against a Dutch side boasting four South African-born cricketers.
Two of them were the top-scorers - Colin Ackerman (41 from 21 balls) and Stephan Myburgh (37 from 30) - in the Netherlands' 4-158.
Then, another South African-born player, Brandon Glover, took 3-9.
"There has always been a tale with South Africa, which we all know," Glover said of his birth nation's World Cup flops.
"We love South Africa but we're dedicated to the Dutch."
The Netherlands team also featured two cricketers born in New Zealand, one born in Australia, one born in England, and another born in Tonga.
