Compton's qualities come to the fore

There may be days when, like breakdown cover and car insurance, Nick Compton appears an unnecessary extravagance for England.

There may be surfaces, and there may be attacks, where England's strokemakers can flourish without the need for the seatbelt and speed-limiter that Compton brings to the side.

There may be times when Compton, with his caution and care, is perceived to block the progress of an aggressive middle-order who are aching to get at the bowlers.

But against the world's best paceman, in conditions offering bowlers copious assistance, Compton proved his worth to England. Responding to a familiar challenge - a poor start from the England top order - he demonstrated the determination, the defiance and the defence for which this side have been crying out. He did exactly the job he was picked to do: he stopped the rot and planted foundations upon which his team-mates may build.

On a tacky pitch that may well quicken and ease, England still face a fight to shrug off the considerable disadvantage of losing the toss. But without Compton and James Taylor, it is entirely possible South Africa could already have taken a match-defining grip upon this game.

Some think Compton's pace of play is counter-productive for England. Daryll Cullinan, the former South Africa batsman, took to Facebook to suggest Compton's style "takes the team nowhere" during the first day of this Test.

"Compton keeps South Africa in it," Cullinan wrote. "Surely he has got to work it out better."

But England have a team containing several natural stroke-makers. They have a middle to late order that is exciting but perhaps a little fragile and would surely benefit from batting against bowlers who have been wearied and a ball that is softened. Test cricket may have changed, but while it still lasts five days, there will still be a place for batsmen like Compton and Alastair Cook. His role is not so different to that of Gary Kirsten, who so often provided the platform for the team in which Cullinan played.

It is true that Compton does not have the range of stroke of Joe Root or Taylor. And it is true that he does not have the timing of Alex Hales or the power of Ben Stokes. So while Root was able to get off the mark first ball by playing the ball down off a thick edge to the third man boundary and later cut a perfectly reasonable ball from Morne Morkel - fractionally short and on the line of off stump - to the point boundary, Compton has to work much harder for his runs.

His first three scoring strokes were all scampered, almost desperate, singles and, at one stage, he became so becalmed on 46 that there was a ripple of relieved applause when he finally squirted a single. His half-century occupied 145 balls.

He does have some elegant strokes. He cut Dale Steyn for one boundary and played a gorgeous cover drove off Kyle Abbott for another. But such is his desire to eliminate risk that his scoring options are more narrow than most.

His strengths are different. They are as much the shots he does not play at those he does. So while Hales' assured start was squandered when he prodded for one he could have left, Compton knows where his off stump is and is able to leave with much greater assurance.

He also demonstrated a composure that allowed him to cope with fallow periods. So, after he was beaten by his first delivery - a brute of a ball from Steyn that pitched on off stump, reared and left him - he gave an appreciated nod of the head to the bowler, put it out of his mind and prepared to face the next ball. A few deliveries later, he edged another fine delivery and was fortunate that, on this disappointingly slow surface, the edge did not carry to first slip.

But he trusted in his ability. He knew the ball would soften and the conditions would ease. He backed his concentration and technique to see the off the challenge and capitalise later. He batted like Test batsmen used to bat.

Perhaps this is a development on the version of Compton that first played Test cricket. At that time, Compton craved success so much, that the fear of failure may have paralysed him. Now, with a settled personal life and in a dressing room that appears more embracive of diversity, he seemed impressively calm bearing in mind the career-defining situation in which he found himself. There was nothing soft about this innings.

He is better prepared than most for the gloomy conditions in which he found himself. With his mentor, Neil Burns, Compton is familiar with lowering the lights in training sessions and setting the bowling machines on the fastest speeds possible. The logic - that if he can cope with that, he can cope with anything - is probably sound, but he can hardly have anticipated facing Steyn under floodlights in a murky Durban.

Yes, England will score more slowly with Compton in the side. But England's problem - Abu Dhabi aside, perhaps, of recent times - is not so much scoring slowly as being dismissed too quickly. They have, at this stage, lost more Tests than they have won this year with batting collapses a wearingly familiar characteristic in their defeats.

England have lost their third wicket for 73 or fewer 15 times in their 26 innings in Tests this year. Eleven times they have not made it past 52 before the loss of their third wicket (one was the run chase in Abu Dhabi). It is telling that, of the four matches where they have not suffered such a start in either innings, they have won three.

So Compton's solidity makes sense for England. And, while it would be premature to look too far into the future, it may well hammer a nail into the coffin of Ian Bell's international career. For all Bell's many talents, for all his timing and class, this was not an innings that he would typically have played.

This will have been an emotional homecoming for Compton. It is not just that he hails from this area and that he had family in the ground. It was that, after two-and-a-half years in the international wilderness, he proved his point more eloquently than he could ever have done with words.

In the aftermath of his dropping in 2013, Compton gave an interview or two that suggested he had not been given "a fair crack of the whip." It was a phrase that irritated the England management and probably made his return to the side a little harder. He admitted ahead of this game that there were times when he thought there could be no way back for him.

But after all the talk, he backed his words with actions here. He proved that, against the best bowlers, under pressure and in testing conditions, he could provide the backbone England required. And he did it without one word that could be construed in any way negatively by the England management. Ronan Keating probably wasn't thinking about Nick Compton when he sang, "You say it best when you say nothing at all," but it is a phrase that aptly sums up his contribution here.

Taylor and Compton's partnership provided encouragement beyond the immediate for England. To see Stiaan van Zyl bowling in the second session was to see the potential weakness of the South Africa side: they are a bowler short and, if the top-order can survive the initial burst and Dane Piedt can be milked, the burden on the three seamers becomes too heavy against an England line-up that bats below sea level. In the final session of the day, with Dean Elgar bowling, South Africa looked over-reliant upon Steyn. He is a special talent, for sure, but he is a special talent carrying a heavy burden. It is a situation England can exploit.