Image Credit- ICC
While Aiden Markram promised that South Africa’s close call in the T20 World Cup final will “fire us up” for future competitions, he also acknowledged that it was “gut-wrenching” and “pretty tough to deal with” that they didn’t win their first international trophy despite requiring 30 runs in the final five overs.
After Axar Patel gave away 22 runs in their innings’ fifteenth over, South Africa appeared certain to chase 176 in their first-ever men’s World Cup final in any white-ball format. However, India’s bowlers gave up just one boundary in the last thirty balls, thanks to an outside edge from Kagiso Rabada, to win by seven runs and leave South Africa to wonder what could have been.
Asked to put his emotions into words, Markram said: “I don’t think I can say them yet, to be honest. It’s tough. This group is a great bunch of people. In my opinion, they deserve really good things to go their way.
“I had a really good feeling about this competition before we came here and as the competition went on, that feeling got stronger and stronger. It’s pretty tough to deal with now, but it’s sport at the end of the day: someone’s going to win, someone’s going to lose. And we’ll try to use it to fire us up for future events.”
The youngest players selected for the final are Marco Jansen and Tristan Stubbs, the backbone of South Africa’s team being aged 28 to 34. When the next T20 World Cup takes place in India and Sri Lanka in early 2026, some of them will have moved on, since Quinton de Kock is scheduled to retire soon, but Markram thinks the others will take this loss as motivation.
“It’s a great group of guys that’s been together for quite a long time now,” he said. “To get to our first final, like I mentioned a few days ago, it’s something we can be proud of [but] still, in our eyes, not good enough. You’re not satisfied with making a final… it’ll take a bit of time for us to reflect back on all the good things that we’ve done, but obviously for the time being, it just hurts a lot.”
Markram declared himself “proud” of his team’s performance in the tournament, which saw them win eight games to go to the championship. In addition, he stated that South Africa has moved “one step closer” to winning a final and that there will be “a snowball effect of quite a few to come” if they do.
” It’s tournament cricket, it’s tough cricket. It’s not easy to win trophies and you’ve got to take your hats off to a team like India for lifting the trophy. A lot of hard work goes into it.
“It’s just gut-wrenching. That’s really what it is. Each player has been on a different individual journey to get to this first final. Ultimately, you become really tight as a group and you want good things to happen to this group because you know they’re great people.”