Stand in South African skipper Aiden Markram expressed his disappointment after South Africa's ODI series loss against India. Stating that the results have meant that Proteas have taken a step back in their quest for preparing for the World Cup, Markram mentioned that the silver lining is that it happened now rather than two or three months before the World Cup begins.

Speaking at the post-match press conference, he said, “Obviously we have taken a step back because results-wise and performance-wise we haven’t moved forward.”But having said that I’d rather it happened now than two or three months before the World Cup starts or during the World Cup". 

Markram also highlighted on the positives that  South Africa drew form this series.  “So there are lessons we can learn, but the most important thing is not to make the same mistakes going forward. I did feel during the series that we made mistakes from previous games, so we didn’t learn well from our lessons. It’s crucial now that we dig into what went wrong and rectify it so it doesn’t happen again in the future.”

“If you look at how they set their innings up, there was always one of the top three in for the 40th over, and that’s crucial in this format,” Markram added.

Complementing the Indian bowling, he said, “Their bowlers controlled the middle period well. They’ve got two good quality spinners and they strike up front with the new ball. They tick all their boxes and we’re going to work hard to do the same thing.”

Markram signed off by complementing his opposite number Virat Kohli for his mammoth run in the ODI series. 

“It’s all from a competitive point of view, it’s nothing malicious. That desperation is shown when he bats – he doesn’t just get his side close to the line, he gets them over it, as we saw again tonight. So there are a lot of things I can learn from him. There are a lot of things I can learn from their team as a whole, and from us as a whole. I’m taking little pieces from here and there" concluded the Protean skipper.