Nottingham, June 19: South Africa once again stumbled in the semifinals of a world event, prompting critics to flash the ‘chokers’ tag but captain Graeme Smith feels his team, which lost only one game, however crucial it may have been, did well in the tournament.

"Every time we lose an important game like this the word (chokers) is going to be thrown around. But this is a knockout tournament from the word go. Maybe the other teams choked in the Super Eight stage. From our perspective we played great cricket and got here and we were just beaten on the day by a better team. That’s the sad reality. I’m very proud of the way the guys played right through the tournament," he said after the game.

Asked what went wrong, Smith had no answer. "It’s difficult to say. It’s Twenty20 and sometimes you get beaten. Today we were."

"The level that we played at, right through this tournament, we probably deserved to be in the final but that’s not the way it was and that’s what makes this game so great. We were beaten by a great performance from Shahid Afridi (51, 34 balls) and a Pakistan team that played better than us," Smith added.

"Afridi in particular had a great game today with both bat and ball and he probably was the difference between the teams. I think the four overs that he bowled (2/16); he got Pakistan back in the game. We were well placed at that stage (when Afridi came to bowl) but we lost our way and never quite got back into it," Smith elaborated.

Asked if Kallis could have speeded up things, Smith did not want to blame him. "He really played a good innings from our point of view and got us into a strong position," he said.