Relieved to have qualified for the semifinals of the T20 World Cup, South Africa captain Aiden Markram acknowledged that the Proteas erred a bit in attempting to finish off the chase against West Indies too soon, leading to an unconvincing victory.
South Africa did well to restrict the two-time champions to 135/8. In reply, the Proteas were 15/2 in two overs when rain disrupted proceedings for close to an hour.
The South African batters saw the reduced revised target and improved batting conditions after rain as an opportunity to go hammer and tongs at the target of 123 but kept losing wickets as the hosts made things tight. But Makram and his men eventually got the work done.
"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.
"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 hopes the nervy win will be a learning lesson for his side.
"We bowled really well, assessed conditions and kept them to a sub-par total. We could have build a partnership after the break and then take it from there, we will take that learning and hopefully not do that same mistake again."
With the wicket aiding spinners, Markram opted to to bowl wrist spinner Tabraiz Shamsi (3/27), Keshav Maharaj (1/24) and himself (1/28), while using pace spearhead Kagiso Rabada and Marco Jansen for two overs each.
"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."
