COACH of the Proteas, Shukri Conrad, admitted that they were defeated by a better team when they were eliminated by New Zealand in the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup.
The local team was bowled out by nine wickets in a dominant match-Eden Gardens, in the city of Kolkata, India on Wednesday night.
In this match, New Zealand won the toss and elected to bowl first. It burdened the local batsmen as the local batsmen got out one after the other and scored many runs.
Marco Jansen, who came in towards the end and scored 55 runs in 30 balls, was the one who made the local team get a respectable number of runs as it finished its 20 overs and totaled 169, with eight players out.
New Zealand came in and collected these runs easily, reaching 173 in the 13th over, with one player still out. The player who was the most troublesome for the local bowlers was Finn Allen who scored 100 runs in 33 balls.
Commenting on the aftermath of this game, Conrad said it is not easy to explain what has gone wrong in this team that has been struggling since the start of the competition.
“Previously, the team was accused of throwing away important games when they were about to win, but this time I don’t see it going like that. We got a lot of blows,” said Conrad.
“We lowered the standard in the most important games. Many things did not go well, but iNew Zealand played very well and did not give us a chance to come back in the game. I’m not going to sit here and try to make excuses, we didn’t play well and they were better than us in every way.
“We are very disappointed and it is clear that the players feel pain but I am proud of what the team has done in this competition. I don’t see that many people expected that we will reach this stage.”
The exclusion of the Proteas from this semi-final means that the streak of failing to win the World Cup T20 and One Day International competitions continues.
Last year the Proteas became the world champions of Test matches winning the ICC World Test Championship.