Defeated South Africa captain Aiden Markram says the loss to India in the ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2024 Final will inspire his side to greater things in the future.

"Hopefully it's one step closer," he said afterwards.

"It's tournament cricket, it's tough cricket, it's not easy to win trophies and you've got to take your hats off to a team like India for lifting the trophy. A lot of hard work goes into it.

"But yeah, we'd like to think we're one step closer and hopefully moving forward we can get that first win and it can be a snowball effect of quite a few to come."

He added that he found it difficult to identify a turning point in the match, and reiterated how proud he was of his players for pushing India so hard.

"This group's a great bunch of people. In my opinion, they deserve really good things to go their way. I had a really good feeling about this competition before we came here and as the competition went on, that feeling got stronger and stronger.

"So, pretty tough to deal with now, but it's a sport at the end of the day. Someone's going to win, someone's going to lose.

"And we'll try to use it to fire us up for future events."