After their small, but significant, steps forward in the first two matches, West Indies continued to take giant strides back towards their recent inglorious past on the second day of the third Test at Kingsmead yesterday.
The optimism prompted by their rare victory in the first Test and their spirit in defeat in the second has quickly withered after a couple of days as debasing as any they have endured in this era of despair.
The absence of the injured Chris Gayle as captain and opening batsman, added to the initial loss of Ramnaresh Sarwan, also through injury, has decimated the leadership and the batting. The loss of the toss was a further setback. It was a combination compounded by the bout of flu that kept Shivnarine Chanderpaul, the most experienced player in an inexperienced team, off the field throughout the South African innings.
For all that, West Indies' performance has been a lamentably weak one. They must now depend on their batsmen to save face, if not the match, and at least Daren Ganga and Brenton Parchment got through the last 11 overs of the day unscathed.
The straightforward statistics tell the story, if not the whole story. When South Africa declared 11 overs before the end at 556 for four, they had occupied only 120 overs at the galloping rate of 4.63 runs an over and thumped two sixes and 84 fours in all.
Their lead was 417. Only twice in almost 80 years of Test cricket have West Indies been that far behind. Both were against England, in Kingston in 1930 in a match that George Headley's unbeaten double-hundred in the second innings and rain helped them draw and at Headingley last May when they trailed by 424 and lost by an innings and 283 runs, their heaviest defeat ever.
On a day of warm, cloudless sunshine and in conditions devoid of the encouragement enjoyed by South Africa's bowlers under cloud before lunch on the first day, Ashwell Prince and AB de Villiers helped themselves to stress-free hundreds, joining captain Graeme Smith who collected his on the first afternoon.
The West Indies also registered three hundreds but theirs were against the two bowlers expected to spearhead their attack, Daren Powell and Fidel Edwards, and the medium-pacer Darren Sammy. Powell and Edwards, so instrumental in the first Test triumph with their controlled pace and hostility, could hardly put two successive balls in the same place.
Repeatedly banging it into the lifeless surface so the batsmen could indulge their productive cross-batted shots, or else over-pitching, they went for 257 runs from their combined 49 overs for Powell's lone first-day wicket of Herschelle Gibbs. Powell is in his 25th Test, Edwards in his 30th. They both average over 40 runs per wicket and their inconsistency places a definite question mark over their future.
The left-hand batsman Prince overcame his usual early uncertainty through gully to complete his seventh Test hundred, ending unbeaten 123 from 196 balls with 15 fours, mostly pulls and cuts. He was so nervy in the 90s that only luck prevented him missing out, as he did when run out at 97 in the second Test at Cape Town. At 96, he pushed Sammy to mid-on for a suicidal single and was yards short of his ground when Powell's throw missed its mark.
de Villiers' rapid-fire 103 from 109 balls, with a six over square leg off Marlon Samuels' casual offspin and 15 fours, was his fourth in all Tests and third against West Indies.
Their unbroken stand of 182 from 38.2 overs was the third in succession in three figures, following 199 between the overnight pair, Smith and Hashim Amla, and 122 between Jacques Kallis and Prince.
Such a recitation of figures is an indication of just how effortless it was for South Africa's batsmen. If anything, it was even simpler than that. The agenda for the day was established within the first few overs. It varied little.
Powell's sixth delivery was one of the many long hops he served up and Smith duly crunched it to the midwicket boundary. His three overs before he was replaced by Sammy, whose first ball was also pulled for four by Smith, cost 18.
In the second over, from Jerome Taylor, the one bowler with a semblance of discipline, Ganga misfielded, Samuels fumbled in the outfield and a stroke that should have yielded nothing earned two.
So it continued. These were the bad old days all over again.
Even the wickets of Amla and Smith in successive overs 40 minutes into the day brought only temporary relief as the West Indies had to wait another two hours for their only other success. Amla's dismissal was a credit to the intuition of Dwayne Bravo's captaincy although there was much else about his field placing that was mystifying,
At the start of a Sammy over, he positioned himself straight on the off-side half-way down the pitch. Three deliveries later, he accepted the catch off Amla's leading edge.
At the opposite end, the deserving Taylor found Smith's outside edge and Denesh Ramdin, whose work behind the stumps has been impeccable throughout the series, tumbled to his left to secure a two-handed catch in front of first slip.
Prince, always shaky outside his off-stump early in his innings, fended off a Taylor lifter just out of gully's reach when he had scored a single and twice went through the same position off the same bowler.
The period soon passed and Prince and Kallis were in such command that Kallis' wicket, for 74 from 101 balls, came like a bolt out of the clear blue sky. It resulted from an edged cut off Samuels' off-spin and was well taken by Runako Morton at slip. By then, the West Indies seemed resigned to their fate as the South African total mounted.
At 35, de Villiers was surprised by Powell's bounce with the second new ball and taken on the glove. But the ball lobbed out of slip's reach. Prince's run-out scare didn't shake the partnership which might have gone well into the third day had South Africa kept on piling up the runs.