South Africa captain Aiden Markram said that there is a lot of relief in the camp after they defeated West Indies and qualified for the semi-finals of the ongoing T20 World Cup 2024.

West Indies was asked to bat first by South Africa in Antigua and despite 35 by Kyle Mayers and 52 by Roston Chase, the hosts could make only 135/8 in 20 overs. Tabraiz Shamsi starred with three wickets for the Proteas.

South Africa got a revised target of 123 in 17 overs due to rain and West Indies gave them a tough fight. Tristan Stubbs (29), Heinrich Klaasen (22), and Marco Jansen (21*) managed to achieve the target for Proteas in the final over and 3 wickets in hand.

"A lot of relief to get through to the semifinal. Not going to be brainwashed by that. We would have liked to be more convincing with bat in hand. After the rain break, the wicket was playing nicely. We did not get the partnerships to then kill the game. Tried to kill it (the chase) too early, but it put us in a tricky position. (The win) is massive for us and fantastic for the change room,” Markram said in the post-match presentation.

Markram is hoping that his team will learn from the nerve-wracking victory.

"We bowled really well, assessed conditions, and kept them to a sub-par total. We could have built a partnership after the break and then take it from there, we will take that learning and hopefully not do that same mistake again,” he added.

"We picked Shamsi to have a mystery spinner against them and immediately saw it spinning, so we wanted to bowl as much spin as we could. If it wouldn't spin that much then we would have used our pacers, not a lot of times when KG bowls only 2 overs.

We have been doing well, the bowling unit is firing and as a batting unit, it is about when to take the game on. We need to be smart in those situations,” the South Africa captain signed off.

(PTI inputs)