Proteas captain Faf du Plessis admitted on Monday that when the notification came through from the umpires that their World Cup match against the West Indies had been abandoned, he was a happy man.
The No Result outcome gave South Africa their belated first point of the competition, meaning their semi-final hopes are still alive albeit on life support, but it also allowed them to avoid what would have been an extremely tricky situation had play resumed and maybe just a 20-over match been played.
With their score on 29 for two after 7.3 overs, South Africa would have had just 12-and-a-half overs in which to thrash out some sort of total for the West Indies to chase with all 10 wickets intact.
Plus the fact that they had lost two wickets meant the DLS system would not have given them many, if any, runs extra when the target was recalculated.
“Well, the horse is out the shed but we wanted a full game, especially against the West Indies, you want it to go the full 100 overs given the make-up of their side. But you can’t control the weather so we’ll take the one point and move forward. The nature of chasing always favours the team batting second in a shortened game and we had batted seven overs without expecting it to be shortened, which affects the pace you go, and we lost those two wickets.