New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming was delighted his team reached the World Cup Super Sixes on Monday, but said he could not help feeling sorry for South Africa.
The Kiwis sneaked through when South Africa's must-win match against Sri Lanka ended in a tie after rain forced the players off the pitch.
"It was incredibly hard, I guess you don't like to see a situation like that for another team," said Fleming.
"But from our own point of view we are just delighted to go through. It just doesn't get any closer than that.
"The last four days have been pretty tense trying to work through the run rates, then just watching a game which controlled so much of your destiny."
New Zealand had already done their cause no harm by chasing down 197 runs in 23 overs in Benoni, but there were hiccups along the way.
I think we did all we could with the bat
They slumped to 32 for three and 114 for five before an unbeaten 54 from Scott Styris sealed victory.
Fleming said the plan was to get the runs as quickly as possible.
"Sixteen overs was our first optimistic call," he admitted.
"We had two or three strategies in place depending on how many wickets we were going to lose.
"We trusted that the guys at the bottom could hit the ball well, which they did."
Fleming paid tribute to Canada's John Davison, who struck 75 off 62 balls and took three wickets.
"He strikes a very clean ball and a very big ball and we were pretty nervous while he was still out there," he said.
"But the rest of the Canadian team played well and put us under a lot of pressure."