The Air Quality Index in Ahmedabad at the start of the fifth and final T20I on Friday was 142. That's poor, but significantly better than the more than 400 it was in Lucknow on Wednesday - when the game was abandoned because of stubborn fog.

And it was fog, not smog. That much could be ascertained, even through a screen. Fog is milky white, smog a yellowish, brownish smudge. What shrouded the Ekana Stadium for hours on end on Wednesday was white.

Even so, the players will have been relieved they didn't have to exert themselves in the 400+ AQI environment. Indeed, Hardik Pandya warmed up wearing a mask.

This is alien territory for South Africans. The AQI in Cape Town on Friday at the same time the match started was 50, or on the cusp between good and moderate. In Johannesburg, the country's biggest city, it was 52.

And in Venice it was 151 - officially unhealthy. What does Venice have to do with it?

The Russian-born American poet Joseph Brodsky had an abiding love for the canal-strewn Italian city. So much so that he was buried on San Michele, an island in the Venetian Lagoon, after his death in Brooklyn in January 1996. Ezra Pound, a fellow poet tainted by his embrace of fascism, and composer Igor Stravinsky are also interned there.

In Watermark, his book-length essay on Venice published in 1989, Brodsky waxes wonderful on what Venetians call nebbia and we know as fog: "It obliterates all reflections ... and everything that has a shape: buildings, people, colonnades, bridges, statues. Boat services are cancelled, airplanes neither arrive, nor take off for weeks, stores are closed and mail ceases to litter one's threshold. The effect is as though some raw hand had turned all those enfilades inside out and wrapped the lining around the city ...

"The fog is thick, blinding, and immobile ... This is a time for reading, for burning electricity all day long, for going easy on self-deprecating thoughts of coffee, for listening to the BBC World Service, for going to bed early. In short, a time for self-oblivion, induced by a city that has ceased to be seen. Unwittingly, you take your cue from it, especially if, like it, you've got company. Having failed to be born here, you at least can take some pride in sharing its invisibility ..."

Enough with the fog fetish already. And so much for far flung AQI readings. More pertinently, how about the CQI - the cricket quality index? It's exponentially less easy to measure than pollutants in the air and thus entirely subjective.

We've seen high quality cricket from the South Africans on their tour of India, particularly in the two Tests. You might say they out-Indiad the Indians. Senuran Muthusamy scored the only century of the series, and of the nine batters who made at least 100 runs in the rubber, seven were South Africans. Simon Harmer was the top wicket-taker, followed by Marco Jansen.

The visitors' 2-0 triumph - their first Test series win in India in more than 25 years - effectively shut up those who rubbished their qualification for the WTC final against Australia at Lord's in June because they didn't have to play England or Australia or tour India to make it that far. Their five-wicket victory over the Aussies in the final quieted their critics. Now they have been utterly silenced. Come back to us when you play as good a game as you talk.

As impressive as they were in the Tests, South Africa were less convincing in the white-ball matches. They went down fighting by 17 runs in the first ODI in Ranchi, where both teams soared past 300. The runs continued to flow in Raipur three days later, when not even centuries by Virat Kohli and Ruturaj Gaikwad could stop the South Africans winning by four wickets with four deliveries remaining.

Then something strange happened. With the series keenly poised after two intensely competitive matches, South Africa were bowled out for 270 and thumped by nine wickets with 10.1 overs remaining. It was less a contest than a capitulation. And not the last of its sorry ilk, as it turned out.

Chasing 176 in the first T20I in Cuttack, the visitors were dismissed for 74; their lowest score in the format. Fuelled by Quinton de Kock's 90 off 46 and Ottneil Baartman's 4/24, they bounced back with a 51-run win in New Chandigarh. But another flaccid batting performance in Dharamsala, where they were dispensed with for 117, became a seven-wicket loss with 25 balls unbowled.

So to Ahmedabad on Friday, when India's aggression was made apparent in painful ways. First umpire Rohan Pandit was felled by a blow to the knee delivered after Sanju Samson hammered Donovan Ferreira's full toss back to the bowler - who couldn't get more than half a hand on what might have been a catch. Then Hardik Pandya's flat six down the ground to the first ball he faced, bowled by Corbin Bosch, hit a cameraman on the shoulder. He remained standing stoically.

Pandya had more where that came from. Fully 79.37% of his 25-ball 63 was smote in fours and sixes. Here's hoping the heat generated by the violence he visited on the ball burnt up some of the pollution and improved the AQI.

When Pandya hammered Bosch over midwicket for six to reach 50 off 16 - the second-fastest half-century in the format for India - the cameras alighted on a spectator holding an entirely apt hand-written banner: "Pandyamonium".

Such was Pandya's dominance that while he was at the crease few noticed that Tilak Varma was quietly tilting towards a century. They put on 105 off 44, and Varma deserved better than to be run out for 73 off 42.

Any chance South Africa had of chasing down their target of 232 would be heavily dependent on De Kock, especially in the first half of their innings. But he had needed treatment after injuring his right hand catching the first ball of the match, bowled by Lungi Ngidi, and spent much of the rest of the innings keeping wicket left-handed. Would he be able to hold, nevermind swing, a bat?

He would, maybe not least because on Friday he became only the second man after David Miller to earn 100 T20I caps for South Africa. De Kock hit half of Arshdeep Singh's opening over of the reply for fours, and kept going.

Reeza Hendricks had faced just five balls for his seven runs when De Kock launched Washington Sundar over long-on for six to bring up 50 off 21 balls. Astoundingly, South Africa were ahead of the asking rate.

The runrate might have dipped after Shivam Dube, at midwicket, thrust his big left hand in the path of Hendricks' uppish flick off Varun Chakravarthy in the seventh to end the stand at 69 off 39. But Dewald Brevis arrived to help De Kock keep South Africa in the hunt with a partnership of 51 off 23.

The stand's demise, in the 11th when the modern master we call Jasprit Bumrah juggled but held the return catch De Kock blipped off a slower ball, marked the beginning of the game's denouement.

Five balls later, Brevis' bullish effort was snuffed out at 31 off 17 when he pulled Pandya's slower bouncer to deep midwicket. South Africa were properly on the skids in the next over, when Chakravarthy trapped a lapping Aiden Markram and bowled Ferreira, both with googlies. In a game that was all about boundaries being bashed, it was striking to see two slips and a short leg deployed for the hattrick ball, which George Linde defended sturdily.

The South Africans lost seven wickets for 81 on their way to a 30-run loss. It wasn't the kind of hiding they had suffered three times previously on this tour. But it meant they've won only four of their nine completed games in India. That's not good enough, whatever the AQI.