India were effectively 10 for 3 when Washington Sundar and Dhruv Jurel slowly made their way towards the dressing room at Lunch on Day 3. Yashasvi Jaiswal and KL Rahul were both gone, and Shubman Gill was still in hospital after a neck spasm suffered the previous day. There was thin, crumbling ice under India's feet. Afterall, their target (124) had not been chased down at the Eden Gardens before. And the pitch just a day before had left batters questioning the very core of their vocation. But let's back up a little.

South Africa took to Day 3 without running a roller on the pitch. Doing so would've flattened out some of the unevenness that caused erratic bounce, but they needed the pitch to deteriorate even quicker than Saturday by the time their bowlers were back on the job. The dilemma, of course, was that they first had to bat on that untouched pitch first and get to a total their bowlers could work with.

Rishabh Pant came expecting more of the same unreliable behaviour from the surface, and started with Ravindra Jadeja from the more potent pavilion end and throwing on Axar Patel from the other. Jadeja got one ball to turn and fly off a fuller length to pique India's interests, but such moments were rather fleeting over the next hour. Temba Bavuma and Corbin Bosch had Pant worried, as the lead went past 100, and they mostly looked unbothered.

Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj wiped out what remained of South Africa's innings on either side of the drinks break, and India emerged to bat in the knowledge that the bounce wasn't treacherous today. There was turn for spinners, as there would be on any Day 3 wicket in this part of the world, but that's where the challenge almost ended for those with bat in hand. Which brings us to India's post-Lunch disintegration.

India lost their remaining seven wickets - all to spin, in just 28 overs. But the defeat, their fourth in eight home Tests under Gautam Gambhir, isn't as simple as saying this team no longer knows how to play spin. This isn't a group of batters who've suddenly woken up and forgotten how to handle a skill that has been their staple through years of domestic grind. And this isn't a selection issue either.

India's current frailties lie in being unable to buckle down and offer time against spin. There seems to be a compulsive need to combat struggle, and sustained accuracy from the other end, with urgency all the time. But this isn't a black-and-white case of 'don't attack, only defend'. Coaches will, in fact, encourage batters to indulge in a bit of a mental one-upmanship by changing gears once in a while and pouncing on mistakes. It forces bowlers to rethink strategy, captains to adjust their fields, and might even open up more scoring avenues. But there's still a tightrope to walk between picking out such moments and forcing a shift regardless.

"In Test cricket, there is not only a need for skill, there is also a need for mental toughness," Gautam Gambhir opined after the defeat. "Because, in Test cricket, if you are not able to absorb pressure, because, no matter how much of a turning wicket it is, the first 10-15 minutes are tough. Once you see that off, you get used to the pace of the wicket and things start getting easier. So, I believe, more than the skill, I think it is the ability to absorb pressure.

"It was a wicket where your technique can be judged. There is a mental toughness challenge. And more important than that is, do you have the temperament? If you are looking to grind, if you are looking to bat long, then you can make runs. If your defence is solid, then it's not a wicket where you can't make runs. We have played on such wickets before."

Take the Dhruv Jurel and Rishabh Pant dismissals as the case in point. Jurel saw an opportunity to maximise a long-hop from Simon Harmer, and went for it. He ended up holing out to the deep square leg fielder, but the fact remains that it was the right route to go down in a small-percentage chase like this one. There are no guarantees to execution in sport, only for the right ideas, which it was in Jurel's case. Pant's attempt to break out against the same bowler, however, was not driven by opportunity. It came from an unwillingness to endure against an off-spinner who was monotonously consistent with his probing. Just nine balls of struggle against the spinner broke Pant, coaxing him into stepping out and giving the bowler a return catch.

Jadeja, who has been an exceptional Test batter this year, committed forward twice against Harmer without covering for the drift, line or angle of the ball.

That these fallacies came in a game where a visiting captain had shown the merits of mental application is not a good look for the home batters. What Gambhir described as the need of mental toughness, his South Africa counterpart, Shukri Conrad, described more poignantly. He put Bavuma's success in this game down to being 'comfortable with the suffocation' that the India spinners forced on him.

There's also a tinge of irony to India's batters not having the wherewithal to blunt long periods of spin. Their own game plan with the ball hinges on doing exactly the same - wearing down opponents with a barrage of spinners and their mind-numbing accuracy.

Damningly, South Africa's No.9 batter Corbin Bosch faced more deliveries than every India batter not named Washington Sundar, in the second innings - and this after they used the light roller ahead of the chase. Washington was also India's only batter to face more than 50 deliveries in both innings, while Bavuma's 136 in the second set South Africa up perfectly.

After a sobering evening on the field, Gambhir made two points distinctly clear: This was exactly the kind of pitch India asked for, and it isn't the veil his batters can hide behind. If Guwahati serves up something similar in a week's time, India batters will know one thing for certain from this outing: time won't just heal old wounds, it'll help avoid fresh gashes.