South Africa learnt at the Wanderers that they can't always play catch-up cricket and succeed.
In Perth and Melbourne, they came from behind to win with a brilliant flourish against opponents who could give no more. In Johannesburg, however, there was no wriggling off the hook, no JP Duminy miracle in the middle order, and the Australians deservedly went 1-0 up in the series.
"Every team has a breaking point. At the Wanderers, we broke first and that's why Australia won the Test," conceded Mark Boucher on Tuesday. "We bowled badly in their first innings, and they learned from our mistakes and bowled a fuller length with good discipline.
"But we don't have any psychological scar tissue. We know where we messed up and we're determined to put that right here in Durban," he added ahead of the second Test beginning at Kingsmead on Friday.
Boucher and his teammates had just spent the previous hour enjoying a recovery session in the bath-warm Indian Ocean outside their beachfront hotel as they began their preparations to butt horns once again with an inexperienced but tough and desperate Australian team that performed the basics so much better than they did in Johannesburg.
"Jeez, there's a lot of salt in that water; my eyes are really red," smiled the Proteas wicketkeeper. He knows only too well, however, how adept the Australians are at rubbing salt into wounds they have opened up. The Baggy Greens have now won two Tests in a row, and the South Africans know they face a bitter battle to effect a momentum swing in order to level the series.
Boucher said he derived hope from the fact that the team had a tough team talk in their dressing-room after the match had ended on Monday evening. "We spoke for more than an hour about how we had performed as a team, and how we had performed as individuals.
"What I like about the Test team is that the guys are pretty mature. A lot of them were really hurting, but they were able to handle the criticism. We were very open with each other, and I just hope that we've learnt from our mistakes."
The key, as Boucher acknowledged, was that South Africa have to be "on the button from ball one".
"At the Wanderers, we only started playing Test cricket after three days. You can't do that against Australia."
Asked to sum up the improvement needed, he said: "A lot more discipline, to get it right from the start, hang in there for five days and put the opposition under pressure. Then we'll see who breaks."
South Africa have got into a bad habit of losing or underperforming in the opening Test of a series. They did it against India in 2006/07, against the West Indies last season and against England last winter.
"We bowled badly in their first innings, no question," said Boucher. "That was a 250-300 pitch, so we gave them far too many runs. Maybe a couple of our guys were undercooked, and maybe we didn't stick to our game plans when we saw the ball flying around. You could say that we tried to bowl too many million-dollar deliveries instead of building pressure like we did Down Under."
Asked whether the Proteas had prepared properly, or whether they went in carrying too much rust, he said: "We didn't get the ideal preparation. We started our camp (on the Saturday before the Test) two days early, so we could get the cobwebs out, but we weren't able to get a middle at Centurion because it just rained solid. The problem with our schedules these days is that, on the one hand, there's a fine line between giving guys the rest they need, and on the other, the preparation they need for big matches."
The wicketkeeper with the world record in dismissals was sure of one thing: "There's a lot of passion in the team, and they are desperate to please the home fans. We've had our heart-to-heart and got our frustrations out. Now we're looking forward to the next game. We understand it's a big series for our country and that people want to see us win."