This was after they got knocked out of the tournament by New Zealand at the semi-finals stage, a feeling South Africans are all too familiar with at major ICC events.

He made a brutal assessment of his team’s performance saying they never had the game at Eden Gardens for them to even choke.

The Proteas have been given the chokers tag in the past due to their perennial underachieving at the big stage, and Conrad expects it to rear its ugly head again.

"I think in order for you to choke you must've had a sniff in the game, but we didn't really have a sniff. Tonight we got a proper hiding.

"I think there are going to be enough people who are going to be jumping on the bandwagon, but we did so many special things. I'm so proud of these guys because I don't think many people gave us much of a chance of even getting to the semifinals when we left our shores."

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While Conrad believes they exceeded expectations at the World Cup, he knows that they will be judged by whether they won the trophy or not.

He added that the players are still hurting after the 9-wicket thumping, but says they’ll accept what happened soon enough.

The Proteas did not use any spinners in the powerplay at the beginning of the New Zealand innings, which backfired as Marco Jansen and Kagiso Rabada haemorrhaged runs and ultimately failed to control the scoring rate.

He gave an explanation for that decision and believes the alternatives only look better in hindsight.

"Look I think we always fancied Marco against them with the swinging ball. Things needed to go our way but one or two edges flew past slip and short third man, and the wicket got a lot better.

"In hindsight you can ask a lot of questions, but it looked like KG and Marco troubled them to a certain degree and then the floodgates opened after that. It's easy to say in hindsight why no spinners but I do feel that the wicket started to play a lot better."

SANJAY BANGAR

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