South Africa captain Aiden Markram (AP Photo/Manish Swarup) South Africa captain Aiden Markram admitted it was simply a night where very little went his way as an out-of-control New Zealand national cricket team stormed into the T20 World Cup final with a crushing nine-wicket win at the Eden Gardens.New Zealand’s charges were led by a breathtaking 33-ball knock from Finn Allen, the fastest hundred in T20 World Cup history, as they chased down 170 in just 12.5 overs. For Markram, the damage was done early.
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“I think you look at the conditions early on and they bowled really well up front. Ball didn’t really want to come on, some were stopping on the wicket and some were hitting quite low on the bat and that made scoring really difficult and through that pressure builds up and unfortunately you lose wickets,” said Markram.He credited the Kiwi bowling unit for squeezing his side during a power-play where the scoring was never quite flowing. “So give credit to their bowling unit and obviously with the bat, somebody playing an innings like that, you don’t think you’re going to get on the right side of the result a lot of times as a fielding team.South Africa ended up 169 for 8, largely thanks to Marc Jansen’s unbeaten 54 off 30 balls and a crucial stand with Tristan Stubbs after they slumped to 77 for 5. Markram felt there was still hope at the break.“Getting to 170 was a big effort to be fair. Halfway through we really felt like we were sniffing around,” he said.That optimism quickly faded when Allen and Tim Seifert took to the bowling alley. “But the way it goes in T20 cricket … (in) the powerplay (they) got on the flyer and unfortunately they can’t protect every boundary and yes, they ran out and it was really difficult to pull it off from there.”Markram reserved special praise for the openers who killed the contest in the first six overs. “So we give huge credit to Finn Allen’s knock, Tim Seifert’s knock, who killed the game as early as they did, and yeah, unfortunately, it was just the bad night for us tonight.The captain pondered what could be done differently and suggested a quicker tactical adjustment of the bat that might help.“It’s hard to say now. We’ll reflect on it as a group. I think we expected the wicket to play really well. It looked pretty good on the surface, so potentially you just have to adapt a bit quicker to the bat and maybe go back a bit more to the old school approach, set it up and try to scratch your way to 190 and you might be in the game from there.”Despite the disappointment of another final, Markram stood firmly behind his team. “So yeah, we’ll reflect as a group. Obviously we’re disappointed with the result but we’re very proud of this group of lads who played some really good cricket during this game and it’s a really unlucky night.”
