Adelaide, Nov 6 (IANS): A distraught South Africa skipper Temba Bavuma admitted that bowing out of the T20 World Cup after a shock 13-run loss to the Netherlands in their final Group 2 match at the Adelaide Oval will be a hard one to swallow for his team.
The Proteas entered their final Super 12 match against the Netherlands with five points to their name in four matches. All they needed was a win against the Dutch to seal qualification for the semifinals. Overwhelming favourites to win Sunday's contest, South Africa were unable to chase down 158 as none of the batters got a big score.
"Very disappointing. We really played well before this game. We knew it was a must-win game and again we faltered when it mattered. Hard one to swallow for the guys. Everything was in our hands as a team.
"We had the confidence, we had the belief. We had the form behind us. When it mattered, we just couldn't do the business," said Bavuma in the post-match presentation ceremony.
The shock 13-run loss to the Netherlands meant that the tag of chokers came back to claim South Africa in a World Cup yet again. With the ball, only Anrich Nortje was the one who could keep the Netherlands batters in check with his economical spell of 1/10 in four overs.
But it was the batting performance which surprised all as no Proteas batter crossed the 30-run mark, with Rilee Rossouw's 25 being the best score. With the Dutch being bang on with the ball and in their fielding to get their first win over South Africa, Bavuma admitted his team got a lot of things wrong in a pressure match, including not getting a lot of runs from the short, square boundaries.
"You can pick out a lot of things when you lose that way. Firstly myself with the toss, winning the toss and bowling first. Wasn't ideal to let them off to a start and let them score 158.
"With the bat we just got stuck similar to the Pakistan game. We lost wickets at crucial times. The wicket maybe got a bit hard, but they used the dimensions of the ground a lot better than we did. From all of us, just wasn't good enough."