Bowlers fail test of nerve and skill

One didn't know whether to laugh or cry. In conditions that were tailor-made for bowling, England's five seam bowlers allowed South Africa's last five second-innings wickets to add another 201 when they must have gone out in the morning hoping to dispose of them for around about 40, leaving the home side to score around 240 to win.

One didn't know whether to laugh or cry. In conditions that were tailor-made for bowling, England's five seam bowlers allowed South Africa's last five second-innings wickets to add another 201 when they must have gone out in the morning hoping to dispose of them for around about 40, leaving the home side to score around 240 to win.

The odds would still have been in favour of the South African bowlers, especially if their principal three - Makhaya Ntini, Jacques Kallis and Andrew Hall - had bowled anything like their potential. On the other hand, a target of this size requires only one batsman to play out of his skin and it is game on.

England had everything to play for. The speed at which their own first innings had folded on Saturday had been disappointing and, although they soon got rid of the South African openers, the bowlers again foundered on the prickly spike of Gary Kirsten and Kallis.

In both innings these two batsmen had shown that the most important quality needed to bat in these conditions is experience.

However, the England bowlers then recovered in the last hour of the day and will have returned to the pavilion knowing exactly what was expected of them. They will presumably have talked about it in the dressing room afterwards and, later in the evening, the conversation is unlikely to have strayed far from the same theme.

Some may not have slept that well either, unable to sit upon their nerves. The coaches will have had their say too, and no one will have left the dressing room when play began on the fourth morning without knowing exactly what was expected of them. In the event, none of them was able to fulfil these basic requirements.

From the start easy runs were given away; the ball was bowled on both sides of the wicket; the batsmen were given full half-volleys to drive, then supplied with shortness and width so that they could indulge themselves in the square cut or the drive off the back foot. Then, to sum up the whole situation, poor old Mark Butcher dropped a relative sitter in the slips.

Can there ever be a satisfactory reason to explain why competent cricketers who had won a Test less than a week before, allowed their games to go to pieces like this? Are they quite as good as they are made out to be? Do they receive the right advice from within the dressing room? Does it have anything to do with the negative, defensive attitude that seems to be prevalent within the England side at the moment and which prompted Marcus Trescothick to take up the offer of bad light on Friday evening? Or is it a debilitating lack of self-belief? Take your pick.