The temptation is great to throw a big blanket over all this.

People tend not to watch sports with the aim of wallowing in misery. Cricket is supposed to exist in the realm of fun.

On the other side of the board, you’re crushing a team and you tend not to want them to drink too deeply from the cup of self-loathing. Their lack of self-confidence devalues ​​your own achievements, and in elite professional sports you want to celebrate every victory. The team you beat was just ready to be beaten? It’s not fun.

Test cricket in particular, perhaps among all sports, can be exceptionally forgiving. Its narrative arc is long, and allows for all kinds of crazy comeback scenarios. Were you out for 185 batters in the first? Rest assured, one of your openers is having one of his best days and you beat the opposition for 160. Not so bad now, right? Oh, you gave up a 130-point lead in the first inning? It doesn’t matter, one of your openers rocks a quick century and you’re back at the same level. So you’re chasing more than 300 in the last rounds? It turns out it’s easier than ever to do in modern testing.

The truth is actually quite simple. Test cricket, for all its largesse, cannot forgive this. He can’t forgive a full 42.

Every action that followed Sri Lanka’s first innings was peppered with what it meant for a team to be bowled out for 42.

South Africa had been shaken by their dismissal for 191 runs, but they were surging after those 13.5 overs, having established a lead of 149 runs. The sun was shining on a soft Kingsmead pitch on the second day, and so when they went back to bat, better batting conditions were in store. Hang on, crouch, play safe. You lose a first match at 17, but you already have a lead of almost 200 points. It’s good.

And in this scenario, promoting an injured No. 7 to No. 3 would have seemed like a more serious risk, with match advantage on the line. Mulder ended up facing just 31 balls and made 15, so can -maybe its effect on the game was minimal. And yet it was a higher score and more balls faced than any combination of the two that Sri Lanka’s batters had managed in their first innings.

The next day, Temba Bavuma and Tristan Stubbs faced each other on a very discreet pitch, under the blazing sun. If 42 all out had been 200 all out, Sri Lanka could have attacked for longer, their bowlers better refreshed after a break of more than 13.5 overs. The attacking fielders could have stayed put and the bowling speed might have fallen less than it did. Bavuma and Stubbs may have still thrived. But they were almost certain they faced greater challenges. The opposition being three points short of 200 is an entirely different proposition than being three points short of 50. The tendency in the data age is to admit only quantitative data and ignore qualitative elements.

In public, Sri Lanka’s bowlers said that a collapse such as 42 all out was just “one of the things that can happen in cricket”. But they are humans. Inside, they were probably seething.

This continued even into the fourth innings, where South Africa had so many runs on the board that they simply needed to keep making up playing positions and keep throwing offensive lines. There was little consideration for reducing runs. Chandimal cuts and pulls. De Silva drove and Kusal swept. They have reached the borders in privileged areas, but no serious thought has been given to closing these gaps. Sri Lanka needed to play dozens more shots, dozens more overs, to even scare South Africa.

There was no sense that South Africa was in danger, that one moment of misfortune, or half a dozen, could turn this match around.

A Test Match arc is long and it can be forgiving. But he couldn’t forgive everything.