The South African team had been told by their cricket board before this match to treat it as unofficial. India had announced their intention to play it like an official Test. Yet it was the Indians who looked lacklustre and disinterested, and South Africa who ground it out with patient determination, and then blazed away to put the match out of India's reach. On a benign pitch, they added 305 runs today and now lead India by 334. Jacques Kallis, who has averaged 70 this year in Tests, and would have reached 1000 runs for the calender year were this an official Test, completed a patient century, as he out-walled not just Rahul Dravid but even the Great Wall of China. The other great allrounder in the team, Shaun Pollock, then made an almost-run-a-ball century to put the Indians out of the game. His Test average for the year is an almost-as-imposing 64.

It was a familiar story for India, with an unfamiliar captain. Rahul Dravid took over from an injured Sourav Ganguly - an interesting twist in a week that positively spiralled. It had been prophesied that Dravid would take over the captaincy from Ganguly on a full-time basis after this series. In the event, he stood in for this match, and it was amply clear that it did not matter who the captain was – with a team like this, he didn't stand a chance.

The Indians never looked in the game. The bowlers were as toothless as a nonagenarian's smile, and the fielders seemed offended if asked to run, and were quite happy to concede singles as the scoreboard ticked like a time-bomb. The tide was against the Indians, and having sunk to defeat so often in the past, they seemed reluctant to struggle. Not waving but drowning, they went through the motions.

What can any captain do in a situation like this? The problems in Indian cricket, the reasons why India performs so dismally time after time, are endemic. The on-field indiscipline, the temperamental weaknesses, the inability to grind, and fight, are all ingrained in their cricketing culture. If anyone, the coach can effect change, and even he needs time, which John Wright is unlikely to get given that Jagmohan Dalmiya is reportedly out to get him.

A lot of the other problems with Indian cricket stem from the infrastructure of domestic cricket, and its administration. Is it Dravid's fault that he has Connor Williams opening for him, a flat-track bully who simply cannot play on these pitches, which require you to go back and across rather than forward, but don't exist in India?

Sourav Ganguly has won six out of the last 13 Tests for India, all of them without a full-strength team, two of them against the strongest team in the world, and one outside the subcontinent, for the first time in a decade and a half. He has done this against the odds - in spite of circumstance, and not because. As for his losses, they have come in situations which no other captain could have converted to his advantage. He must get a longer run at the top, and those who criticise him constantly must realize that every time India lose, no matter how abjectly they may surrender, it is not necessarily his fault. Rahul Dravid, after the day he had on the field today, would surely agree with that.

Amit Varma is assistant editor, Wisden.com India.

Wisden Asia Cricket Monthly will be launched on December 2 in Mohali by Nasser Hussain, and the inaugural issue looks at the Indian captaincy in its cover story. Rohit Brijnath examines Sourav Ganguly's predicament, and considers the brutal nature of the job. Suresh Menon writes on how the captaincy is the second-toughest job in India, a burden only the hardest of men can bear. Watch this space.

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