West Indies captain Jason Holder says that his team was in the match until AB de Villiers walked out and took it away from them in emphatic fashion.
"AB played a great innings. We were in it when he arrived and took it away from us."
South Africa batting first made 408 for five off their 50 overs with de Villiers smashing an amazing unbeaten 162 off just 66 balls. The West Indies in reply made just 151 all out–going down to their biggest loss in ODI cricket.
Holder, who went for 102 runs off his 10 overs was ripped apart by deVilliers, as his first eight overs cost him just 40 runs. His last two overs went for 62 runs, with the penultimate realising 34 runs, the second highest in World Cup history after his countryman Hershelle Gibbs slammed Holland's leg spinner Dan van Bunge for six sixes at St Kitts in the 2007 World Cup.
"He was difficult to stop, I tried to land some yorkers but it just did not work out the way I wanted. He is not easy to tie down. We dropped chances and this did not help. If you take away my last two overs, it would have been a different story, we needed to hold our chances."
Holder came back to score a half century when the West Indies batted and felt he did not have a bad game personally.
"I had a pretty good game, it is just that one player came in the end and took me out of the it."
Asked why he did not continue with Chris Gayle after he took 2/21 off four overs, the Barbadian said, "It was a judgement call, we needed to bring back a strike bowler with two relatively new batsmen at the crease. It did not work out for us this time but we will keep on working on executing our plans."
West Indies now needs to win their final two matches against India at Perth on March 6 and UAE on March 15, to have a chance of qualifying for the quarterfinals.