Nagpur, March 13: As the match against India went down to the wire, the dreaded ‘C’ word started doing the rounds, casting an ominous shadow on proceedings for South Africa. But the Proteas used the mounting pressure to their advantage, choosing instead to spell out another word by their performance, quite different in meaning to chokers - champions.

A relieved Graeme Smith spoke to the media about restricting India to a score of 296 and the nail-biting chase that followed.

Excerpts from the interview.

On the tight game and being a relieved man after winning it

For 15 overs upfront we took an absolute beating, but for the 75 we played some incredible cricket, I think. Chasing 300-odd in the second innings was a hell of an effort from the guys and I think we’re all pretty speechless about it.

On picking nine Indian wickets in as many overs powered by Steyn’s five-for

Yeah, I mean Sachin [Tendulkar] and Viru [Virender Sehwag] put us upfront under massive pressure and we didn’t respond too well for the first ten overs. But the guys really showed a lot of composure. It was a hell of a noisy atmosphere here today and the crowd really backed India and we just needed to back ourselves, keep hanging in there. When we got outside, it was some good bowling out there and Dale and a couple of guys chipped in and then to get the last [few] wickets was just a massive thing.

On whether the unsuccessful game against England was behind them

Winning and losing in the last two games is I think is a lesson for a lot of our guys, especially the middle-order chasing - it was fantastic to see the guys. Robbie [Robin Peterson] and Faf [Francois du Plessis] and [Johan] Botha really performed so well today. The confidence that you get from a win like this is huge and I hope we can hold on to this now.

On Robin Peterson

Yeah, Robbie is the calmest man in the team but he was partying a little bit there. But I haven’t seen him hit the ball that sweet in a long time. It was a good day for him - he’s been performing really well with the ball. We backed him in this World Cup and he has bowled well and so full credit there.

On the next step

Obviously, [we would like to] enjoy this and tomorrow evening we fly via Mumbai to Kolkata for another game. I think we have had long breaks between our games and now we play every three or four days which is good for us.