South Africa captain Aiden Markram felt that the failure to cross the final hurdle in their maiden World Cup appearance will “fire us up” for future tournament but conceded that the team’s inability to score at run-a-ball in the final five overs was “gut-wrenching” and “pretty tough to deal with”.

South Africa were on course for a win in what was their first ever appearance in a World Cup final till the 15th over when Axar Patel was milked for 22 runs, leaving the equation down to 30 required from the final five overs. But Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya and Arshdeep Singh squeezed the flow of runs and conceded a single boundary in the final 30 deliveries to leave them seven short of the 177-run target.

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.”

Markram said he was proud of how his team performed throughout the competition, winning eight games out of eight before ending on the wrong side of the final but believed that they will use this defeat to motivate themselves for future tournaments.

“It’s a great group of guys that’s been together for quite a long time now. 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.”

“In hindsight, things will still feel really good about this competition. Just for the time being, it stings a bit, but it’s good for it to sting. It gives you that little bit of fire in the belly for the next time that you’re here.”

“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,” he said.

Appreciating India’s efforts, Markram said that it wasn’t easy to win trophies, and expressed his happiness that the Proteas have come one step closer and that when they finally win one, there will be “a snowball effect of quite a few to come… 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.”