Time For Some Realism, South Africa
De Villiers - still settling into the number four berth.
South African fans are labelling it a bad day at the office. They're not wrong - no good day at the office ever results in 83 all out - but to write it off in this manner is also not quite correct and could be classed as arrogant.
Similarly, Graeme Smith indicated the Proteas are finding it difficult to lift themselves again after the "high" of the Test series. There's no doubt that this is a contributing factor, but Smith would have done well to acknowledge that his side could actually be inferior to a balanced England outfit.
South Africa had won their previous nine one-day matches coming into this series, while England had lost back-to-back home and away series against New Zealand, so perhaps there were grounds for the Proteas having a certain amount of complacency. But those victories were against Bangladesh, West Indies and New Zealand, masking the transition which South Africa's one-day team are going through.
The top three are established players who all know their roles, but AB de Villiers is still settling into his new spot at number four. Sure, he's been there for a year now and scored an unbeaten hundred during South Africa's superb series victory in Pakistan last year, but when the chips were down yesterday he still lacked the experience to keep a cool head and just drop and run a few singles to ease the pressure. With Stuart Broad bowling straight but not doing a huge amount with the ball, that was surely the way to go.
Meanwhile JP Duminy remains a huge talent who is rightfully being backed for big things, but he's new on the scene and hadn't batted in a pressure situation before this series. Albie Morkel is one of their best limited-overs players and, in form, can be the world's most feared batsman at the end of an innings. But that counts for nothing if he's in with only 50 on the board and just 16.4 overs gone.
As for the bowlers, Morkel is the only one-day specialist. Dale Steyn is a fantastic Test bowler and is probably worth his place as a strike bowler in the one-day side, but as long as there is no one to tie the opposition down at the other end he will struggle to be effective.
The fact that Charl Langeveldt - for so long thought of as a very ordinary bowler - is now dearly missed highlights just how important it is to have specialist limited-overs bowlers. Stuart Broad is still an average Test bowler, but has proven himself to be a top-class one-day bowler. Proteas fans may snigger at that, but his one-day record (Ave: 26.05, Econ: 4.77, SR: 32.7) is vastly superior to the inexperienced Steyn (ave: 39.62, Econ: 5.66, SR: 42) and only marginally inferior to Makhaya Ntini (Ave: 24.37, Econ: 4.46, SR: 32.7).
This is not to ring alarm bells or say that the Proteas won't win a game in this series. Rather it is to point out that they remain a work in progress and so victory should not be taken as a given, as seems to be the case, especially against a team reinvigorated.
Tristan Holme