South Africa began as the favourites to win the first semi-final against New Zealand at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata before the first ball was bowled on Wednesday. But the Aiden Markram-led side were blown away by a whirlwind, unbeaten innings of 100 from 33 balls by Finn Allen, which resulted in a nine-wicket loss and eliminated them from the T20 World Cup.
The exit led to the familiar talk of Proteas choking under pressure when head coach Shukri Conrad was asked about it. Using his usual wit, Conrad said the heavy loss to New Zealand was actually worse than a choke, because South Africa never really had a chance to win and were on the back foot throughout the match.
“I don’t think tonight was a choke; I thought it was a bloody walloping. It would have been a choke if we had a sniff. I don’t think anybody had a sniff. Tonight, we got a proper snotklap, which means a real hiding. I think there’ll be enough people that are going to be jumping on the bandwagon, but yeah, we did so many special things. I’m so proud of all these guys. I don’t think many people gave us much of a chance of even getting to a semi-final when we left the shores,” he said in the post-match press conference.
Conrad admitted that South Africa chose a ‘crappy’ match to suffer their first defeat of the tournament, adding that the fact they played most of their matches in Ahmedabad could not be used as an excuse for their loss on Wednesday.
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“Yeah, we chose a really crappy time to have a bad night. There’s obviously a lot to be said about playing all our games at Ahmedabad and not having played anything in some of the other states, but again, that’s no excuse. They strangled us up front, lost wickets, didn’t get any sort of momentum going. And yeah, a hell of a lot didn’t go right tonight,” the head coach said.
“But that was probably enforced because they were so good, and they never gave us a sniff. We had one chance early on, didn’t go to hand and pretty much plain sailing for them after that. Look, I’m not going to sit here and try to make excuses for a bad night. We weren’t good, and they were excellent,” he added.
New Zealand will face the winner of the second semi-final between India and England in Mumbai, in the final at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on Sunday.
