Hurting South Africa begin new adventure

The overwhelming feeling in Delhi is that some things in the city are not as they should be. It's not supposed to be this warm at this time of year. There shouldn't be so much smog but there is and perhaps because of it, kids shouldn't be going to school. And the Test series between India and South Africa shouldn't have petered out this way.

The scoreline is not the issue. The home fans are delighted with 2-0 and rightly so, but India's success has been overshadowed by the surfaces it's been achieved on. Even the team has been left disappointed that the focus has been pulled away from their performance; from what what India call their own excellence to exploit home conditions or South Africa's inability to adapt to them. Instead Virat Kohli and his men find the neutrals comforting the vanquished and not celebrating the victors.

The swathe of sympathy has given South Africa some breathing room. Amid 'tough conditions,' and even the ICC has agreed where Nagpur was concerned, the tourists have not had to look deeper into whether they could have done things better to avoid their current predicament. "Whatever happened in the last Test match, I don't think will leave any tattoos on the team because it was a difficult Test match for everybody," Hashim Amla said.

Amla could even afford an answer which may not have been entirely serious when he was asked what it is like to to be a batsman in these circumstances. "Exciting," he said, complete with a diplomatic reasoning. "It's a lovely challenge facing good bowlers on difficult tracks."

It wasn't long before Amla seemed a little more earnest and even with the series gone, overcoming India in such conditions was firmly on his bucket list. "We want to get in. On wickets like this, you are never quite in. You can scratch around some runs," he said. "Whereas on other wickets, that are a bit more truer, you can set your innings in and dig deep. It's been very difficult at times, but been exciting and a good challenge for our batters. After this tour, a lot of us and younger guys will take a lot of experience out of it."

The truth is South Africa will not simply brush this off as an aberration on an otherwise outstanding record on the road. This was a crucial series for them, perhaps the most important of the last few years and certainly the most important of Amla's tenure as Test captain. It was supposed to exemplify of how well they have transitioned, instead it has shown that their next generation of players are not yet up to scratch. To have fallen so far short of where they would have wanted to be will not sit well with them regardless of what they may say in public.

They were bystanders in their own big show and on the eve of the Delhi Test, that became clear in the most cruel way. There are no South Africans in the ICC's Test team of the year, mostly because in the time period under consideration - September 2013 to September 2014 - South Africa played just five Tests. They won two, to claim a series win over West Indies, and drew three, including two rain-affected games in Bangladesh, which explains why they were overlooked but it would be little consolation. After all, even without much cricket, players like AB de Villiers - who scored two hundreds in the two wins - and Amla would make most teams.

Again, Amla's answer revealed something about where South Africa stand. "The number of games played in the period is probably the most important criteria in something like that. That's not a lot of cricket compared to the other teams, so I don't think it makes much of a difference. When you play more games you score more runs or take more wickets."

Perennially, one of South Africa's problems has been that they don't play as much Test cricket as the big three despite their ranking. This season was supposed to change that. Two successive four-Test series to make up a mega summer. But the first half has given disappointing returns, which means South Africa have a lot of ground to make up in the second segment - at home against England.

Nothing they physically experience in Delhi will prepare them for that series. The conditions, the opposition and the atmosphere will be completely different but somehow South Africa have to find a way to take something out of here.

It may be something as small as a single spell from one of their reserve bowlers - and some of them will be in operation because Dale Steyn has been ruled out again - or it may be something much bigger about the spirit they show and the pride they salvage. The thought that the series is not at stake may sit uncomfortably with South Africa but they have to stomach it. It was not supposed to be this way but it is.