The bat was proffered upright and at an angle of submissive defence. No funny business there. But the ball, ever the mischief maker, had other ideas. It splintered off the inside edge, snuck past leg stump, scooted into the fast outfield, and hit the boundary with an almost apologetic plop.

With that, a decent chunk of the 39,769 who were at Eden Gardens on Sunday did what doesn't often happen in reaction to such an unlovely stroke. Even if it does take the batter to 50. Especially not if that batter is in the visitors' XI. And particularly in places where pride in the national cause is paramount.

Not this time.

The crowd stood.

And applauded.

Temba Bavuma returned the salute by raising his bat, perhaps enjoying the rarity of the moment as much as the moment itself.

"The crowd cheers loudly when India have done something good," Bavuma told a press conference, without mentioning that the spectators fall creepily silent when the opposition succeed. "But that gives you energy and keeps you connected in the game. As much as it spurs on the Indian team, it also has a positive influence on us."

Well Bavuma might have enjoyed his moment of being acknowledged by the spectators. He had overcome a pitch of dastardly inconsistent bounce and vicious turn that made batting, particularly on the first two days, a cruel joke. He had withstood the efforts of an attack that bristled with four of the top 20 ranked bowlers in the game. His innings, which endured through eight partnerships, was the great leap forward South Africa needed to retain a hope of winning.

"He was clear on how he wanted to bat, and that went against the grain of everybody else in the match," Shukri Conrad told a press conference. That was the difference between the two sides, Temba's innings.

Conrad described Bavuma as "suffocated but comfortable", and paraphrased Bavuma's gameplan as "I'm going to get beaten by balls on the outside; as long as I don't get beaten on the inside, I'll bat through this".

How would Bavuma sum up his approach? "I try to play around my defence."

He was 55 not out when India ended the innings and walked off probably confident of chasing the 124 they needed to win. With Simon Harmer in rasping form for his 4/21, they were bowled out for 93.

"It's not every day you take a lead of 123 and feel that's a winning score, but we had to believe," Bavuma said. "We knew it was tough. We saw that in our first innings, and we took confidence in the fact that we were able to put them under pressure with the ball. The bowlers brought us back into the game."

After winning the toss and choosing to bat, South Africa were bowled out for 159 with Jasprit Bumrah revelling in the conditions to take 5/27. But, with Harmer taking 4/30 and Marco Jansen claiming 3/35, the visitors were able to keep India's lead to a marginal 30 runs.

Even so, to stay in the game South Africa needed partnerships. But, when they dwindled to 91/7 - just 61 ahead - their biggest stand was 20. Enter Corbin Bosch, who scored 25 in an eighth-wicket stand of 44: the biggest of the innings and the second-highest in the match.

"His partnership with Boschy was immense, and that gave us something we felt we could defend," Conrad said. "Temba and Boschy played like gods."

Bosch wouldn't have been in the XI had Kagiso Rabada not withdrawn with a rib injury.

"Boschy might not have had the impact that KG might have had with the ball, but that partnership was Boschy doing Boschy things," Conrad said.

Especially on that pitch.

"Batting yesterday was tricky," Bavuma said. "We felt that the spin was extreme."

Not that he was singling out India's curators: "In South Africa sometimes, you get pitches that are on the other end of extreme. As a batter, you're still expected to score runs. Similarly, coming to the subcontinent, the conditions can play out as extreme in other ways."

Conrad all but refused to criticise the pitch: "When you come to India and the [rest of the] subcontinent, you expect pitches like this. So I don't have a problem with them.

"You've still got to play well. You've got to bat well, you've got to find a way. That's why it's a home series. You've got to find ways of giving your side the edge. Thankfully we found a way.

"It's more of a mental battle than a battle of your technique sometimes. Because you feel you don't know where your next run is coming from."

How did Bavuma prepare his players for batting on a pitch that had, in terms of what they were more used to, reached its fifth-day stage on the second day?

"This morning my message to the guys was always try and play what's in front of you, try not to have too many preconceived ideas," Bavuma said. "Fortunately this morning the pitch did calm down. There was still turn, but Corbin and I could build a partnership. It was a case of play what's in front of you, keep your nerve, and, importantly, keep the belief that the result can still go our way."

Belief is one thing. Finding the bowlers to back it up distinctly another. Or, in this case, the bowler: Harmer. The off-spinner walked a winding path to Eden Gardens. He left India with 11 wickets at 25.40 in the two matches he played in South Africa's miserable November 2015 series, when they failed utterly to come to terms with the conditions and lost 3-0.

Harmer went missing from South Africa's teams for almost seven years, partly because he went Kolpak with Essex, partly because spinners like Dane Piedt and Keshav Maharaj made their bones in his absence. Maharaj, the top-ranked spinner in this series, has done much to change his pace-passionate country's attitude to spin.

"We've always had decent spinners, we just never had a crop of them," Conrad said. "Because in Test matches at home we rarely played more than one. It feels like Kesh has been around forever, and we also had guys like Paul Harris and Claude Henderson. But Henderson and Simon Harmer went on Kolpak deals. So when Simon called me up a few months ago and he said he's desperate to play for South Africa again, I was more desperate to have him back.

"We are thrilled that we can come to the subcontinent with a quality pack of spinners, and it will do wonders for our game back home. Because youngsters can see we're keen on spinners as well. It's not only a fast-bowling country."

It's also a country for people who believe. People like Bavuma, who left the field carrying something rarer than runs or applause: the belief that this South Africa side could walk through the chaos and still find a way.