South Africa and India took a little less than three days of cricket to add another chapter to Cape Town's rich legacy of great Test matches. Both captains reached quick consensus that it was a great match to start the series. Those who were at the venue on days one, two and four would claim they will not forget it. India's top five must try. Virat Kohli's 28 was the top score across two innings for a top-five cherrypicked to accommodate four specialist bowlers and a seam-bowling all-rounder.

After India slipped to a 72-run defeat in a chase of 208, the Indian captain made no bones of the fact that the batting would "need to step up" before the Centurion Test. To lift themselves out of that mental hole, Kohli suggested that the batters would only need to look as far as the bowlers, who after letting South Africa off from 12 for 3 in the first innings, plugged all escape routes to bowl the hosts for 130 in their second innings. By lunch on the fourth day, India had even achieved parity in the game, only for another collapse with the bat to cost them the Test match.

"I think, we let ourselves down with the bat, that's for sure," Kohli said. "Losing wickets in bunches never helps winning Tests or consolidating your position. Also we rectified the errors we made in the first innings by letting them off after having them 12/3. We plugged that gap pretty nicely in the morning today. Getting them out for 208 felt chaseable, felt very realistic, but again we needed someone to go out there and get 75 or 80 and not 20-25-30 runs."

The top three had fallen with just 27 runs on the board in the first innings. To that effect, India had a numerically better start with Shikhar Dhawan and Murali Vijay adding 30 for the first in the chase. But the hangover of the first innings carried on and India quickly slipped to 39 for 3. After a brief 32-run recovery between Kohli and Rohit Sharma, India colluded to lose four wickets in quick succession to fall to 82 for 7, from where they never recovered despite a gutsy 37 from R Ashwin.

"We wanted one big partnership to get the job done which we failed to do and again we lost four wickets in four overs," Kohli said. "If you do that it is very tough for you to come back and win Test matches from there. We needed to bat better than what we did. Hardik [Pandya] showed great character in the first innings to get us to that total. If we had them 50 or 60 less in the first innings when we let them off in the last few wickets things could have been different. Even now we lost by only 70-odd. Might sound big but we understand where the game was, even today we feel really disappointed by how things went on. We needed, if not one big partnership, then every wicket adding 30-35 would have done the job for us. We needed to show more character with the bat there is no question about it."

India may have been short-changed on a treacherous surface, having dropped vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane - their most consistent performer on the previous leg of overseas assignments. Kohli revealed that the hard call was made on current form and not past reputation. Rohit, picked over Rahane after a prolific series against Sri Lanka, managed only 11 and 10 in the two innings despite showing gumption to fight his way out of a tight corner. The other batting selection, picking Dhawan over KL Rahul, was made to include a rhythm disrupting left-hander.

"Well, we decided to go on current form. Rohit has scored runs in the last three Test matches that he has played, and he was batting well," Kohli said. "We did that similar thing in the past and Shikhar as well. Look, these things can always be looked at in hindsight - thinking what if or what if not. But we decided to go with this combination and current form was definitely the criterion.

"[With Dhawan] a left-hander always helps, that's what we felt. They have got two, including Quinton (de Kock) in their batting order. I mean it's difficult for the bowlers to set their lines and lengths every time with the strike rotating well. It has worked for us in the recent past, that's something definitely is a combination that a lot of international sides want to go with these days, because you don't want the bowlers to settle against one kind of batsmen and one line and length, specially with the new ball. We have to try and create plans that we feel will not let the opposition gain momentum very early on in the game and that's the idea behind it."

Kohli also refused to be drawn into the hype of quicker and faster wickets welcoming his team as the series moved to the Highveld for games at Centurion and Johannesburg, stating that with a little application India would be to exploit even those conditions.

"Look, they had collapses too, even in the first innings, if you take AB's innings out and Faf's to an extent, the batting hasn't clicked for them together either. We felt that we were in the game as well throughout. Today we thought they are going to come out and play with more intent but that wasn't the case, they were quite hesitant when they lost a few wickets. I think if we get a lively wicket again, we will really exploit those conditions. If we apply ourselves well and good enough, as I said, we will give ourselves chance to have a crack at the result which was the in this game also."