Cape Town, Jan 18: Hosts South Africa have once again lost to India in a tight game giving the visitors a 2-1 lead in the five-ODI series. Despite great bowling and some good fielding, South Africa were unable to seal a win at Newlands.

South Africa skipper Graeme Smith spoke to the media about the probable reasons behind the disappointing loss, while giving full credit to Yusuf Pathan’s innings.

Excerpts from the post-match interview

On what he feels about the loss

I am alright though, very, very disappointed. [We] were 20 runs short; we were hoping [for about] 240 [runs]. 240 would have been a really good total on that surface and even though we bowled and fielded pretty well, [we] just wanted to [make the right decisions] at the backend. I think probably all credit to [Yusuf] Pathan; his knock was probably the difference at the end of the day.

On the pitch

It was very slow paced and also up and down, so it had nothing [to offer batsmen]. The new ball had a little bit of seam movement. It’s not the best one-day wicket I have ever played on but it also made for a pretty exciting game. [It was a] close finish and as you say, all the batters struggled and Yusuf Pathan was the one that probably made it look a little bit easy.

On Morne Morkel’s performance(Yusuf Pathan’s catch and three wickets)

He was incredible tonight. He and Dale [Steyn] stayed in the game and bowled superbly well, backed up well. I guess in games like this it is always going to come down to one key moment, a half-chance here, half-chance there. The last five overs, the batsmen really managed 19 runs and lost a lot of wickets. So if in that Powerplay we could have gotten even 20 runs [things would have been different]. We lost JP [Duminy] pretty quickly, which was disappointing. Had we got 30 runs in the Powerplay, 230-240 would have been a great total.

On the next game

The series obviously is going to be a tight one. We’ve just got to regroup now and look to be better than we were today and hopefully we could get one on Friday. Congratulations India!