Plot intact, result missing: South Africa's Test revival still a work in progress

"They lost the game but they did not lose the plot."

Hardly words of consolation for a team that is trying to earn wins, not compliments, but South Africa will take them from Ramiz Raja after losing in Lahore.

In theory, only two big things went wrong for South Africa: the toss and South Africa conceding 114 runs in the final session of the first day. In practice, you only need those two things to go wrong to end up on the wrong side, especially in conditions that quickly become more difficult to bat on and against one of the craftiest attacks going.

Aiden Markram was careful not to dwell too much on the former because, "you don't come to win the toss, you come to win the game and you've got to find ways to do that," which suggests South Africa didn't have enough of the latter. "It felt like there were moments where if we got on top and ran with a bit of momentum, it could have been a different result."

The most obvious of those was when South Africa had Pakistan 199 for 5 shortly after tea on the first day. Mohammad Rizwan and Salman Agha counterattacked with an intensity South Africa could not control. "We thought we had good plans, but they played the sweep shot really well and made it quite tough to set fields that can limit scoring," Markam said. "Through that, I suppose you leak a couple of runs or a couple too many runs per over instead of maybe going at twos and threes, you might be going at fours, and that does eventually add up at the end of the game."

Pakistan scored at 3.45 runs an over in the third session on the opening day, which is not an alarming run-rate by any means but if South Africa wanted to squeeze them, what could they have done? A solution may lie in their bowling selections and combinations. With the resources they had at their disposal, they used offspinner Simon Harmer, who looked dangerous earlier in the day, and left-arm spinner Senuran Muthusamy immediately post-tea, then Prenelan Subrayen and eventually Kagiso Rabada with the second new ball. Could a second specialist seamer, a left-armer perhaps, bowling with an older ball do something similar to what Shaheen Shah Afridi did on day four, when he took 3 for 16 in a three-over spell to end the match?

South Africa didn't have Marco Jansen in the XI, which meant that they did not have that option available to them, which is something for them to consider going forward. "We did still have (Wiaan) Mulder but we felt the ball only tails or reverses for a few overs and then naturally gets softer and that reverse goes away," Markram said. "But we'll look at it, we'll reflect and see if there's an opportunity to get another seamer in if we feel it can make a positive difference. But if we're going to back our spin with Kesh(av Maharaj) being back now as well, we'll have to weigh that up when we see conditions."

Keshav Maharaj should be back in the team for the second Test after sitting out the first as he recovered from a groin injury and he hasn't just been putting his feet up in preparation for the series. Last week, Maharaj captained his domestic team, the Dolphins in a first-class match against the Lions, scored an unbeaten 43 and bowled 49 overs with a return of 3 for 105 so if anyone is ready for Test action, it's him.

Which brings us to another area South Africa need to address in their batting line-up:

If enthusiasm and potential were the defining criteria for picking a player, Stubbs would be the one of the first names on the team-sheet but since form is more important, he has to be sent back to the domestic system. Stubbs has only got into double figures once in his last nine Test innings and South Africa cannot afford to have someone who is struggling that much in a position as important as No.5. For the immediate term, they have two other options on this tour - David Bedingham (who sat out this match), and Zubayr Hamza - and for the longer term, the return of regular captain Temba Bavuma means they are all covered for extra batters. But what of Stubbs?

Even though he is not part of the South African white-ball squads for Pakistan, by the time he returns home after the second Test, there will be no domestic red-ball cricket until early December. At that point, South Africa will be in India, where they play two Tests. An option would be to leave Stubbs at home to play a round of first-class cricket but it would be just one round and whether that can make a material difference is questionable. The rest of the red-ball competition takes place in February, when Stubbs is likely to be at the T20 World Cup. Given the scheduling crunch, it's difficult to find a proper window for Stubbs to get consistent red-ball game time unless he is given the harshest treatment: dropped and told to spend next summer with his domestic team.

That hasn't happened to a player for some time which makes it seem unlikely it will now. An example is Tony de Zorzi, who lost his place earlier this year but has stayed with the Test squad and scored his second Test century in this match. Markram said that behind the scenes de Zorzi, and left-arm spin bowling allrounder Senuran Muthusamy, had both been "working really hard at their games trying to come up with plans to succeed wherever they are in the world," and that their performances in Lahore were "a big feather in their cap." So maybe all Stubbs needs is some extended time in the nets with South Africa's batting coach Ashwell Prince, which seems to have benefitted de Zorzi immensely.

And so back to the positives South Africa will take from a match they did not disgrace themselves in despite what a 93-run margin suggests. The early parts of de Zorzi's first innings century involved a lot of luck and the man himself said he was "just trying to hang in there," but then gave way too good application. Ryan Rickelton showed patience and determination across both innings and faced a total of 282 balls in the match, more than anyone else, and Dewald Brevis appeared to be batting on a different surface as he breezed his way to a run-a-ball 54. With that kind of combination, Markram believes South Africa had what it took to chase a record score at the Gaddafi Stadium.

"A guy like Brevis always takes the game on. That's what he's known for and that's when he's at his best so it was actually great to see him bring out that side today," Markram said. "But Rickleton and other batters in the group might pack their defence a lot more and feed off the scraps that come around that. So, there's two different ways of approaching it and two ways I still think you can be successful in these conditions. It's about committing to one way and living by that."

That kind of thinking shows that South Africa very much have the plot but not the result. They hope to be able to turn that around in the second Test. "I would expect the conditions to be similar," Markram said. "We expected conditions to be like this and we expect it again for the second Test match. It's on us now as a group to go back and find ways to be better and to give ourselves a chance to win."