Finding pride in defeat can be judged harshly, especially by the "winning is all that matters" crew, but South Africa deserved that feeling on Sunday night after their exploits in a well-contested T20 World Cup final in front of the largest audience to watch a female sports event in this country. “It's a bittersweet feeling,” said Proteas captain Sune Luus after her team lost by 19 runs against formidable Australia, who have won the tournament six times in its eight editions. “Personally, I'm feeling extremely proud of every teammate of mine and the management staff. I think we've done an incredible job to get to the final and put up a good fight against a team like Australia. ” She’s right. Luus has faced criticism of her captaincy being too formulaic and lacking creativity and that she wasn’t Dane van Niekerk. But in the past few months she’s galvanised the team around her to achieve something even Van Niekerk, as great of a leader as she is, couldn’t. “You have to put all the distractions and everything that's happening aside, and you really focus on cricket. It helps to get youngsters in who want to be here, who want to play the game of cricket, and it brings that enjoyment factor back. I think that's what we did the past two months. ” It wasn’t the win Luus and the players would have been dreaming about since Friday when they stunned England in the semifinal. However, the performance they delivered was one of great skill, it was thoughtful and it showed plenty of grit. It wasn’t enough against an Australian team whose depth meant they could push Ashleigh Gardner up to No 3 to give their scoring rate a boost when needed, and allowed Meg Lanning to use seven different bowlers. Luus felt a target of 157 was achievable. “Obviously we had a bit of a slow start and had to recover after that and lost crucial wickets here and there, but I think the girls did extremely well, so I'm not going to criticise them too much. ” There is no doubt they have shifted the needle for the women’s game in this country. With a minuscule portion of the investment the men get they achieved something their male counterparts haven’t — they made it to a World Cup final. Like the men, the women’s team has known heartache in ICC semifinals, losing four of them, a few narrowly. But having cleared that hurdle last Friday, it no longer holds anxiety. “We got a sniff of how to play in the final and the feelings, the nerves and everything, and I feel now we have a heartache of not winning a final. “Obviously, getting through that hurdle of the semifinal, I think next year's World Cup, when we get there again, it's not going to be a big thing for us to break that curse or whatever. ” “For us it is to look at that final and say, ‘ How are we going to get through the final and be on the other side of that?’ This was a huge opportunity for our girls, I think they did extremely well and obviously gave Australia a good run for their money. “There were a few nerves from their side as well while Laura Wolvaardt and Chloe Tryon were batting. Overall, obviously, not the result we wanted, but positive feelings and feelings of excitement and pride. ”.