Johannesburg - It may not yet be classified in the same class as Shane Warne's alleged "ball from hell" but Allan Donald's delivery which uprooted Mike Atherton's off-stump yesterday could have already won South Africa a major psychological advantage in this summer's series against England.

While England's coach Duncan Fletcher did his best to down-play the delivery which saw their top batsman dismissed second ball without a run to his name, it is easy to imagine what the skipper, Nasser Hussain must have been thinking when he walked out to face the man they call White Lightning.

It also needs a special effort for any side to overcome the handicap of being only two runs on the board with four wickets down and the sight of a hyped Donald bowling balls at between 135 and 138 kmp/h and seaming around in alarming fashion.

Fletcher's criticism of the pitch was, however, perhaps more muted than had he been an Australian. He saw the surface as being "too bowler friendly up front to last five days and critical on the opening day of a series".

Under such circumstances it needed a cool approach and it was not much use to "run around and panicking and wonder what is going on out there (in the middle".

Fletcher said that under the circumstances it had been better to tell Andy Flintoff and Vaughan to go and play their natural game as pushing tentatively at the ball could have seen England in a lot worse trouble than the 122, the lowest scored England have been dismissed for at this Wanderers venue. The previous was 150 some 42 years ago when the ground was first opened.

He agreed the total was not a competitive one but felt it could have been a lot worse. Had England reached 150 or 175 they would have felt it would have been, under the circumstances, a respectable total.

Donald's view of his performance was a calm response of, "I couldn't have wished for a better start to the series." He also thought that if South Africa managed to negotiate the first session without losing too many wickets a total of 300 plus would be a fair score if the sun flattened out the pitch later in the day.

Fletcher agreed that the bowling of Donald and Shaun Pollock was a world class performance while admitting the pitch, which was far from easy to bat on, gave them all the opportunity to show what can be done without giving anything away.

"There are times when you get conditions such as this where the guys do not bowl well but here we have two bowlers who bowled very well," said the man who only last South African season coached Western Province to the SuperSport Series Trophy.

"We have to remain positive as I feel that it would not have been easy for any side to bat in such conditions so early in the match.

"We have been positive up until this stage, telling the guys to look forward and not back.

"It is the sort of surface which will do something early in the morning and if we get two or three quick wickets and it could change the progress of the innings," said Fletcher.

He had praise for debutant Michael Vaughan's innings who when, with heads rolling around him, batted with calm assurance.

Pollock's bowling, which netted him four wickets almost did as much as Donald to send England's innings into the sort of disarray you occasionally get at the Wanderers: seven years ago, against India it was three for 11 and later four for 26 as Manoj Prabhakar and Javagal Srinath worked the ball around after Kepler Wessels had won the toss and decided to bat first.

India, at Headingley, Leeds 1952, lost four wickets without a run on the board when Fred Trueman made his debut for England. And in 1966/67 against Bobby Simpson's Australians South Africa were 41 for five before recovering to reach 199 and go on to win the match.

Yesterday though, round one of the Donald-Atherton duel went to the fast bowler: it did not even get down to a one on one struggle, just a tester then the armour-piercing rocketing in-swinger which left the batsman in no man's land as he pushed forward; and it was only the sixth ball of the day, the first dramatic over of the series.

Six balls later it was Pollock's turn: a lifter kicking up at Hussain and the England captain standing a moment before the Indian umpire, Srinivas Venkataraghavan, signalling the long walk to the pavilion as the small, vocal crowd joined in.

Butcher, the left-hander, edging a catch to give Mark Boucher the first of his bag of five and Alec Stewart trapped in front the next ball; high drama and long before high noon. The now ball skating around on a surface designed to aid cut and seam as well as pace and found England's top-order unable to cope with the aggressive South African approach.

Which perhaps places in perspective the batting of Herschelle Gibbs and Gary Kirsten who fell for 13 and Jacques Kallis as South Africa reached 61 for one in reply, Kirsten lbw to the left-hander Alan Mullally.