Time running out for nervy Compton

Maybe Nick Compton was unlucky. Maybe, on another day, his top-edged pull would have landed safely just as James Vince's did a little while later. Maybe, on another day, the fielder would not have been able to cling on to the ball; it was an outstanding catch by Suranga Lakmal.

But, as Compton admitted earlier this week, "words are cheap". Runs are the only currency by which Test batsmen can be rated in the long term and he simply isn't scoring enough. Scores of 15, 26, 0, 19, 6, 0 and 9 in his seven most recent innings do not provide much defence. Since his second Test century, in March 2013, he has made one-half-century in 16 innings. In that time, he has only reached 30 three times. He will know better than anyone that he goes into the second innings of this match with his Test career on the brink.

The frustration with Compton is that he is rarely being dismissed as much as getting himself out. While Nuwan Pradeep deserves credit for the wicket-taking delivery here - after nine full balls to Compton, he surprised him with a bouncer delivered at pretty sharp pace on this docile wicket - Compton will feel that he aided and abetted the bowler.

To understand Compton's dismissal, you have to go back. You need to look at the nine balls it took him to score his first run, look at the leg-before shout he was fortunate to survive on 2 - beaten by Rangana Herath's lovely drift, replays suggested that the umpire's decision would not have been overruled had he been adjudged to have been out - look at the desperate single that almost saw him run out on 8 and look at the fourth and fifth deliveries from Lakmal in the 16th over that Compton patted back down the pitch. Both were drifting on to middle stump. Both would have been clipped through the leg side by just about every other batsman in the England side.

None of that need matter. Five days provides plenty of time for batsmen of Compton's style to build an innings and his caution should be his unique selling point and his strength.

But increasingly in recent Tests, it has appeared as if Compton is frustrated and worried by his rate of scoring. So instead of calmly playing out time in the knowledge that he will pick up runs naturally in the course of his occupation, he has allowed pressure to build and then snatched at a scoring opportunity with such desperation that it has resulted in his wicket.

He has said many times that he will play his own way and not be seduced into attempting to be something he is now. But evidence from this innings and the later part of the tour of South Africa suggest otherwise: twice in Cape Town he was caught at midwicket; in Centurion and Johannesburg he was out driving at balls he might have left while in the second innings at the Wanderers he was caught at mid-on. Taken in isolation, each of these dismissals can be explained. But taken as a whole, a pattern has emerged: these are not the dismissals of a blocker; they are the dismissals of a frustrated dasher.

Compton has been sucked into trying to be something he is not and, as a consequence, strayed from his great - if unglamorous - strengths. It is an error that may well cost him his international career.

While neither Ian Bell nor Gary Ballance are quite in the form to demand a recall in Compton's place, there are other options. Scott Borthwick continues to plunder runs at county level - he has scored more than 1,100 in each of the last three seasons despite playing his home games on a tricky surface - while Sam Robson has scored three Championship centuries already this season and is averaging 90.57. There is a perception that James Hildreth does not play the short ball as well as he might, but his weight of runs is becoming hard to ignore.

To be fair to Compton, similar dismissals accounted for most of his team-mates. Alex Hales, for example, looked anxious to reach his first Test century having fallen tantalisingly short at Headingley and, in attempting to hit a long-hop too hard, edged to slip. But, by then, he had passed 80 once more. He will face far more testing attacks than this but does appear to be growing into his role. This was, for the second innings in succession, the most impressive performance of his Test career to date.

"I tried to hit it too hard and lost my shape," Hales said afterwards. "You live and learn. I was frustrated. As an opener, you need to cash in after doing the hard yards. Maybe adrenaline got the better of me and I tried to lamp it for four rather than take the single."

If Compton or Hales need an example of how to relieve pressure while batting, they need look no further than Joe Root. So well has Root been able to incorporate skills learned in the shorter formats into his Test batting that he is now almost impossible to contain. Even when he is not able to find the boundary - and, after two boundaries from his first four deliveries, he only managed three more in the next 114 - he has such a vast armoury of scoring options that he still managed to score at a strike-rate of 67.22.

Typically, he will force the seamers off the back foot through cover, persuading them to pitch fuller - to which he responds by driving off the front foot. Against Herath, he went a long way back into his crease, again inviting the bowler to pitch a little fuller and then pouncing on the extra flight.

But it is not just bowlers' lengths he confuses. There are so many turns and sweeps, forces and deflections that he leaves them unsure of which line to pursue. Combined with his sharp running between the wickets - he is not as quick as Jonny Bairstow; it may well be that no England player has been - and he shows Compton how pressure can be released without resorting to high-risk boundary options.

Root's conversion rate frustrates him - he has now been dismissed 17 times between 60 and 98, and 11 times between 71 and 88 in his 41-Test career - but, aged 25, he already looks a masterful player and shows us that, far from limited-overs cricket encouraging bad habits, it can develop skills to take Test batting to new levels.