South Africa captain Aiden Markram admits that they were not up to the mark against Nepal but there are many learnings for them.

South Africa beat Nepal by 1 run in a low-scoring thriller on Saturday (15th June). Reeza Hendricks' scratchy knock of 42 off 49 balls and then Tabraiz Shamsi's four wicket-haul helped South Africa overcome Nepal's challenge.

Being asked to bat first, South Africa had another poor display with the bat. They scored 115 runs for 7 wickets in 20 overs, in reply, Nepal scored 114 runs and lost the match by 1 run.

“Very grateful to have got the win, we were not near our best tonight. Reflecting back on the game over the next few days, there will be a lot of learnings for us,” Markram said.

“First and foremost, the way Nepal bowled it made it really tough for us. They put us under a lot of pressure. And maybe there was not enough conviction in our plans.”

South Africa’s pacers bowled well again in the match like the previous three matches but the spinners stole the show that day. The pitch assisted the spinners as Shamsi took 4 wickets for 19 runs in 4 overs and Markram got 1 wicket for 8 runs in 2 overs. Markram thinks that they should have one more spinner in the match. “We have a good pace attack and you want to back that. I thought if we got the ball in the right areas, it would be challenging for the batters. In hindsight, we should have picked another spinner,” he added.

South Africa have won all four group-stage matches and qualified for the Super Eight as the champion of Group D.