THE Proteas' dressing room was a quiet and lonely place late on Friday night.

Graeme Smith sought shelter in a corner closest to the ground, talking on his cellphone; Morné van Wyk and Dale Steyn looked towards the pitch, the milling fans, the sheer emptiness of it all. They were vacant, mortified, speechless, a look of utter despondency in their eyes.

Not for the first time, the Proteas were unable to scale an awkward peak when they had sometimes managed to scale peaks far higher. In a creepy repeat of the England game in Chennai, a challenging, but by no means impossible, target initially seemed within their scope. Then wickets crashed, the ball softened, and panic set in. Psychologists call it the return of the repressed.

Suddenly all of the team's demons stood alongside them out in the middle. With little horns and red tails, they mocked their every move and watched perversely as they bottled it.

"It needed our top six to take responsibility," said national selection convener, Andrew Hudson. "We needed someone to bat through, to apply himself with a patient 80. I'm a bit gutted but there's plenty of talent around. South African cricket is in good health. We just couldn't get over the line."

Standing outside the change room, receiving text messages from home, Hudson looked slightly bemused by it all. He said it probably wasn't time for a post-mortem but cricket administrators needed to find out why lower totals than that chased successfully against India proved so haunting.

Perhaps it's because smaller totals on tough pitches offer themselves as constant reminders. Smaller totals demand that the thin line between care and aggression be constantly mastered. Big totals can be approached with a kind of thoughtlessness - because they're so big no one will blame teams for failing.

It might also have something to do with emotional intelligence - and that South African sport traditionally picks its sports heroes from a narrow and essentially conventional band of young men - but it might just have to do with the horror show that is history. "For us it was always getting past De Villiers that was important," said New Zealand skipper Daniel Vettori afterwards, "because we knew they had a long tail and if we could expose them we'd be in business."

Hudson saw it slightly differently. "Balance was key," he said. "Johan (Botha) and Robbie (Peterson) gave us the options at seven and eight that we thought were fine. We picked the strongest side. The best side available. Then we started losing wickets after Jacques (Kallis) got out and it was suddenly difficult to claw our way back."

Pat Symcox, commentating for ESPN/Star with New Zealander, Simon Doull, once again raised the issue of Albie Morkel and Mark Boucher's omission from the squad. "You don't want to blame and you don't want to single out individuals," he said. "But you do find yourself wondering why Morkel, the second-highest paid player at the IPL auction at $950 000, isn't able to make this side."

It is moot as to whether Morkel, who has had a fine week for the Titans in their SuperSport Series fixture against the Cobras, would have made the blindest bit of difference in Friday night's 49-run loss. Panic does not respect reputations and salaries. Morkel wouldn't have been impervious to the fear that snaked through the side any more than his provincial teammate, AB de Villiers was.

"We can only look in the mirror and blame ourselves," said a demoralised, clearly anguished Smith afterwards. "We just weren't good enough."

For Smith it was a horrible way to leave a side he has become so adept at leading. Indeed, he made no fewer than 18 bowling changes in the New Zealand innings, and captained the side with a command that suggests he might, paradoxically, now that he's relinquishing the captaincy, have his best years as captain ahead of him; for a senior player like Kallis, it might be an occasion for some serious introspection. You rather feel now, that the one-day goodbye he has for so long been postponing might be around the corner.