I'm happy to wager that last Friday night's ODI against Zimbabwe at Willowmoore Park has already been forgotten.

If forgetfulness can deepen - and I think it can - it probably will have reached some kind of trough around the end of the season, when debate about the World Cup becomes fevered and all of cricket-loving South Africa will have an opinion about whether Thandi Tshabalala or Imran Tahir is the better option to take to the sub-continent as a second spinner.

In the meantime, there were several facets of Graeme Smith's captaincy in the third ODI against our northern neighbours that bothered me. Remember, the Proteas batted first and set Zimbabwe 400 runs to win batting second - eight runs an over - a nigh-impossible task given the teams' respective strengths.

Smith opened the bowling with Lonwabo Tsotsobe from the far end and Albie Morkel from the town end to a field of one slip, a third man and a fine leg, with three in the covers, as I remember it.

After that, he made a double change, replacing Tsotsobe with Wayne Parnell and Morkel with Rusty Theron. For these two he had no slips, which was strange, given the quality of the opposition and a target that loomed larger than Benoni's landmark mine dump nearby.

Morkel, remember, is an away-swing bowler to the right-handed batsman - as he demonstrated while playing for the Chennai Super Kings in the Indian Premier League.

He's not going to get it to swing all the time (swing bowling is a quixotic art at the best of times) but four or five times in his first spell he's a good enough bowler to get a couple to bounce and go big, probably too much to get a decent batsman to nick off.

Just in case he does get the outside edge, though, he needs two slips and a gully, not a "cute" second slip, which seems a sure way to create a magnetic field between slip and keeper. You can be sure the edge will find it's way there in due course.

Like Morkel, Tsotosbe and Parnell are swing bowlers. They might get it to swing more or less, depending on cloud cover and dew and hardness of the ball, but swing bowlers, practising the high-risk art that they do, need catchers behind the wicket. Granted, they might also need a little bit of protection, but set an inside-out field then, one that simultaneously attacks and protects.

Smith's natural conservatism found still further expression later. After having lost a couple of early wickets, a young left-hander called Craig Ervine came to the crease at five. Until Friday night I hadn't seen Ervine (he's Sean's younger brother) but I was immediately impressed.

He's poised, times the ball sweetly, and looks to score square of the wicket through the off-side.

The opening bowlers had come off by the time he arrived at he crease, and in the early portion of his innings he mainly faced Theron, whose angle of delivery goes across the left-hander. Unbelievably, Smith failed to give Theron a slip, and the bowler and Smith's senior lieutenants didn't think it important enough to ask for one.

All of this would be irrelevant (we're talking about a forgotten match, after all) if it weren't indicative of a significant flaw in our cricket.

We are too conservative and too predictable and Smith inclines to captaincy-by-numbers. This doesn't matter when you are playing a demoralised Zimbabwe, but it might matter in a World Cup quarterfinal.

In a World Cup knockout match it will be tense and the elephant in the dressing room will be getting bigger by the over. In such a situation you need to be brave and adventurous rather than allow a painful fear of losing to dictate your choices.