Didn’t choke, it was a walloping: SA coach Conrad

KOLKATA: Very few expected the T20 World Cup semifinal to go the way it did at the Eden Gardens on Wednesday. More so the South Africans, who stood shell-shocked after being blown away by New Zealand, with the game getting added to their list of heartbreaks in ICC tournaments.Naturally the ‘choker’ word, so infamously associated with South Africa over the years, resurfaced in post-match interactions. “I don’t know if tonight was a choke. I thought it was a bloody walloping,” coach Shukri Conrad said bluntly. “In order to choke, you must have had a sniff in the game. We didn’t have a sniff. In South Africa, we’d say we ‘got moored (violent assault)’,” he added. “Tonight, we got a proper snotklap, also a South African word meaning a real hiding.

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SA skipper Aiden Markram echoed the same feeling. “Yeah, hugely disappointed,” Markram said. “It’s not a big slap in the face, but it feels like it,” he summed it up.Conrad accepted that they were outplayed by their rivals. “A lot didn’t go right tonight. But that was probably enforced because New Zealand were really, really good tonight. They gave us absolutely nothing and they really squeezed particularly well. Their spinners were exceptional in those conditions,” he stated. “The calibre of bowling tonight, coupled with the wicket, made it particularly tough for us,” he added.South Africa’s batting coach Ashwell Prince was disappointed since the side came into the contest as favourites after an unbeaten run in the SHUKRI tournament.