Proteas skipper Dean Elgar has highlighted his batting line-up’s sub-par performance on the first day as the major cause for their walloping 85-run and innings loss to England in their second Test in Manchester on Saturday, which consequently levelled the series 1-1.

After South Africa’s innings and 12-run victory at Lord’s the week before, Elgar, contrary to that first Test, surprisingly opted to bat first after winning the toss. Then, instead of going out and building a solid foundation, the visitors were bowled out for a meagre 151, which England cinched and breezed past.

Elgar, himself, while opening the batting with Sarel Erwee, only scored 12 and 11 in the two innings respectively, and he seemed to take it on the chin, while, collectively, he’d taken responsibility as well.

“First innings runs sort of stabilize your game,” Elgar said. “If you’re scoring 300-plus then you’re giving yourself the best chance to compete or get a result in your favour.

“We were half of that. I really didn’t think we batted particularly well – sure the ball went around – but this is Test cricket. You need to deal with that.”

He added that their loss of two wickets right before lunch on day one, causing them to be on 77-5 at the break, was also a turning point with regards to their stalling momentum.

“We were five down and you are always going to be playing catch-up cricket with regards to that,” Elgar said, “and as we saw, the wicket did deteriorate as we thought it would – it was playing in favour of both the seamers and spinners.

“But I definitely think our batting let us down quite a bit in the first innings.”

Another rather debated and controversial call from the Proteasset-up was to omit Marco Jansen from the second Test line-up, someone who’d been in fine form in the first Test.

Instead, they opted for an extra spinner in the form of Simon Harmer, and Elgar said Jansen’s exclusion came mainly down to experience.

“Marco is probably the least-experienced bowler in our four-prong pace attack – Lungi gives us the control and stability, Anrich has the raw pace and has got a few of the English batters’ numbers, while KG (Rabada) is the overall package.

“We thought Jansen was the obvious choice with Harmy(Harmer) coming in while, in saying that, Harmy also provides something with the bat, so it probably came down to inexperience.”

With the Test being won inside three days, Elgar said both he and the team would use these next two days to dig deep and gain some introspection.

“I won’t change my way or approach, which has been sound and unique and if I do that now, I will be doing myself an injustice and I will be letting the team down because the guys enjoy the honesty and they understand where they stand with me.

“I will have a few days now in which to go back to the drawing board and have a look at and dissect where we could have been better.”

The third and final Test decider is set to start on September 8 at The Oval.