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Steve Smith hopes Australia bowlers learn lessons

Australia captain Steve Smith hopes his bowlers learn from their team's loss to South Africa in the third one-day international.

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David Warner (117) and Smith (108) had put Australia in a strong position as they posted 371-6, a record ODI total at Kingsmead, Durban.

But an unbeaten 118 off 79 balls by David Miller saw the hosts reach their target with four balls remaining for a four-wicket victory and series win.

"It's a very tough loss," Smith told a news conference after Wednesday's defeat.

"Today was our quarter-final, I guess, to keep us in the series, and when you get to halfway and you've got 370 on the board, you don't lose too many games with 370 on the board.

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"Our inexperienced bowling attack, it's a good learning curve for them, hopefully they can learn something out of that, but it's a tough loss."

Daniel Worrall (0-78), Chris Tremain (1-65) and Adam Zampa (1-55) in particular struggled for Australia.

After his side fell 3-0 behind in the five-match series, Smith tried to find positives – while he also lauded Miller.

"It's a pretty hard pill to swallow. We come off at halfway and 370 I thought was a pretty good total on that wicket, I think it was a record score at this ground," he said.

"I said at the start of the day, at the toss, that I wanted the top four to get the bulk of the runs, someone to go on and get 100, and we had two blokes do that so that's a positive.

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"From there, I guess, we've just had South Africa getting off to good starts every time with the bat.

"Today we were able to take a few wickets in the middle and slow the flow of runs, and then obviously David Miller played a phenomenal innings at the back end there.

"He's a clean striker of the ball and on his day he's as dangerous as anyone so he took the game away from us at the back end there."

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