South Africa coach Mark Boucher has said that the Netherlands were the better team after their defeat in Adelaide on Sunday. He also admitted that the Proteas fancied their chances of a win but felt clueless about what went wrong in the game as well. Boucher also said that South Africa were never in the game and credited the opposition.

As quoted by Iol.co.za, Boucher said: “We were never really in this game, to be fair. Like if you look at it, and go from the start of the game on paper, we should have won the game. But the game is not played on paper. It’s played out in the middle. They batted well. They were brave. They can come out and play brave cricket. We then put ourselves under pressure with the bat. They read the conditions really well, and adapted quicker than we did, and they made it really tough for us. I think the more you don’t do well at World Cups, it tends to play in your head a little bit.”

READ MORE: Suryakumar reveals the reasons behind Rohit Sharma’s weird gesture for Dinesh Karthik

However, South Africa’s loss turned out to be Pakistan’s gain, as they reached the semi-final by beating Bangladesh later in the day. It’s worth mentioning that Pakistan beat Temba Bavuma & co. following losses to India and Zimbabwe as well.

Mark Boucher again said: “When you look at the way we started the game our energies were low. I haven’t put my finger on it, haven’t had a chance to speak to guys yet, where they feel it went wrong. Our plans were there, we didn’t quite use them well enough. If you look at the game as a whole, they outbowled us, they bowled to the longer side of the field. They were able to create more pressure than we were on them.”

READ MORE: Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s wife slams trolls through her Instagram post

“The guys were in a good space. I think we played some good cricket over a long period of time, we slipped up the other night against Pakistan, and we looked flat today. I don’t think we overtrained. The energies didn’t seem like it was there today, and we didn’t bowl or bat like we should have,” Mark Boucher concluded.