Quinton de Kock’s effortless century put the third ODI on the path of another runfest, before Prasidh Krishna intervened. His dismissal, South Africa coach Shukri Conrad opined, was the turning point in the contest, one the Proteas never recovered from.

“Losing Quinny just before the drinks break was massive. Another few overs from him and we would’ve posted something competitive. And then towards the back end, when Dewald (Brevis) and Marco (Jansen) get out in the same over to Kuldeep (Yadav), you end up 40-50 runs shy of where you potentially could have been,” he said.

He also refused to lay blame for the defeat purely on the role of dew.

“We were a little bit short with the bat. Because we didn’t post the score big enough, the Indian openers were under no pressure. They didn’t have to take any risks. We let ourselves down with the bat. We needed to post something a lot more competitive to put India under pressure. The toss does play a part and batting second is easier, but that’s not the reason India thumped us tonight.”

Despite the defeat, the 58-year-old said the team will reflect on the positives, with the younger players learning first-hand from “the world’s best” Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.

After his comments following the Proteas’ Test series win ruffled many feathers, Conrad once again reiterated that he meant no malice.

“It was never my intention to cause any malice or not be humble. I could have chosen a better word, on reflection. Because it left it open to people putting their own context to it. The only context I ever intended it to be was for India to spend a lot of time and make it really tough for them,” he said.

“What it did was take away the gloss of what was a really special win for our Test team. It’s unfortunate that the talk became about the coach. People shouldn’t even know who the coach is. It should be about the players. I’d like to think that it’s going to be put to bed now.”