Teetering SA search for balance

Twenty wickets win a Test match, or so the saying goes. The number of runs needed is never specifically quantified. It can be won with as little as 85 runs, successfully defended in 1882 . Or it can need as many as 836, the highest ever target set . Anything in between will do as well.

But South Africa's batting has been a bit too brittle to set up a game. Only one total over 200 in three innings and only two half-centuries, both to the same batsman. AB de Villiers has carried a line-up whose experience has deserted it. Hashim Amla and Faf du Plessis, South Africa's No. 3 and No. 4, have contributed 51 runs. Du Plessis has only scored one. The other problems have mushroomed around that: the opening partnership has not posted more than 15; neither has JP Duminy.

The last 20 days, since the first moment of the Mohali Test, have been spent analysing reasons for South Africa's struggles. The conclusion is that they have lacked the application in unfamiliar conditions against bowlers operating in their own backyard. It is not so much that South Africa have been outspun as they have thought they were being outspun and so they ended up outspun. They played the men, not the deliveries they bowled. They anticipated rather than acted. We've heard all this in different ways and now Amla has both admitted the problem and added another layer to the debate.

"We haven't played our best Test cricket. For the first three innings in Mohali, we were pretty much in it (before the second-innings batting collapse) but in the last Test, we didn't bat properly again. It hasn't been our full, flowing Test cricket that we are normally used to," he said. "When the team doesn't score runs, there'll be a lot of different theories thrown about. Had we won (in Mohali) similar questions would have been thrown towards India."

Amla is right in everything but his reasoning. South Africa have underwhelmed with the bat and so have India. The difference is that India have not needed to overwhelm. Even when it seemed that they had not scored enough runs in the first innings in Mohali, their bowlers compensated. South Africa's attack has not been able to do the same, even though as Amla pointed out, "our spinners have also done a pretty decent job." As proof of the gulf, Imran Tahir has half the number of wickets (6) as R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja (12 each) while Simon Harmer has five wickets, but South Africa have only been able to play him once.

Therein lies the main problem. They can barely afford the luxury of the two specialist spinners, nevermind three, without compromising on the length of their batting line-up and so they end up short-changing both departments. In many ways, this is the long-term effect of the retirement of Jacques Kallis, something South Africa thought they had successfully transitioned through but may not have, especially now that Vernon Philander is injured.

Seven batsmen of which one is a genuine allrounder, two seamers and two spinners would be an ideal XI. If Philander was fit, South Africa could regard him as the two-in-one option. So that leaves Duminy and one of their selectors, Ashwell Prince, has already said that they don't regard him as the frontline allrounder.

As an interim solution, South Africa could go back to asking AB de Villiers to keep wicket and install an extra batsman, which they have in the squad, at No. 7. But then they would have to confront both his chronic back problem and the message they are sending to other teams. Not to mention leave them a little unsure of their ability to take 20 wickets, after all even India are sticking to a five-bowler strategy. The upside though - and one they need badly - is it would give them some confidence that they can bat deep.

Since strength in numbers may not be an option for South Africa right now, they need to find strength in individuals, which has also worked for them in the past. South Africa have gone without a Test centurion only five times in a series of more than three matches in their history and only three times have they been century-less away from home. They have also never won a series of three matches or more in which no-one has scored a hundred.

So the message is clear: someone needs to score and score big. That someone will need a partner or a few partners with staying power and that is what South Africa have worked on developing. "Even our lower-order guys have put a lot of time into playing the ball as you see it and not as you imagined it," Amla said. Instead what South Africa need to imagine is the number of runs needed to win a Test match and then to go out and score them.