The Proteas remain quietly confident and upbeat heading into the ICC T20 World Cup that gets underway on the weekend in the USA and the West Indies.

The Proteas have never been able to win a cricket world cup in the past while they have come agonisingly close on so many occasions.

For South Africa the most important thing will be to adapt quickly as well as being consistent for the duration of the event.

Markram feels that once they get the monkey off their backs more titles will follow.

“We have what it takes,” said Markram.

“It's a World Cup, it's a really high level of cricket and this group has now been together for quite a few years and we've shown many performances in the past few years that we're able to beat the best in the world.

“I'm quite confident that this team has what it takes to win the World Cup and I think once we're able to get that first elusive one, I think potentially quite a few could follow after that.”

The Proteas are coming off a 3-0 series defeat against the West Indies in the Caribbean and while the defeat was a blow to their preparations, they aren’t reading too much into it.

The do have the likes of Markram, David Miller, Tristan Stubbs, Heinrich Klaasen, and Marco Jansen back for the World Cup and this forms their entire middle order.

Markram added that it was a different tournament and team in the Windies and the World Cup will be different.

“There is no baggage from a series, but there is also definitely no ignoring it.

“It was a completely different squad, a young squad and upcoming squad and it's fantastic for them to get that experience in international cricket. So they'll be able to take a lot of lessons from that.

“But for us as a squad here, there are quite a lot of different faces to the squad that was in the West Indies, and we are sort of seeing us starting afresh when we get to that first game.”

The Proteas will face Sri Lanka on Monday in New York, with this game at the Nassau County Stadium getting underway at 16:30.

Morgan Piek OFM Sport