Rob Houwing (file)

Get ready for a nerve-jangling rollercoaster ride at the Bullring … not that I blame the Proteas for one second for seeking something not too far off a mamba in the pitch for the final Test.

After all, they are pinned to a corner and a “guns blazing” approach has to be the recipe, under the circumstances, if they are to square the series against an England team fast developing a culture of eking out draws by a thread but striking like a snake when the chance comes around.

Graeme Smith’s side are perilously close to a horribly unpalatable “distinction”: first post-isolation South African team not to win at least one Test match in an entire home summer.

They will be a little unfortunate if this fate goes their way, of course, because they would customarily play more than four Tests in a season – in this instance all against one fellow top-tier nation – and quite often have a warm-up mini-series against a relative minnow.

By my calculation, the closest the Proteas have come before to a no-wins season on home soil in Tests was in 2005/06, when they were thumped 2-0 away and then 3-0 at home by Australia, and were “saved” by an unusually autumnal visit from New Zealand, when they claimed a three-Test series 2-0. (The final Test at the Wanderers was contested in nippy early May.)

But defeat or a draw for South Africa at the Wanderers, and there will be widespread recriminations, you can be sure.

It would represent a second home season on the trot of defeats in the headline Test series, plus stark confirmation that the Proteas are a team in reverse, considering their contrasting, back-to-front 2-1 win on English soil in 2008.

After all, if you had considered just a few months ago that England would tour without Andrew Flintoff, once their key bowling bully, that Kevin Pietersen would notably fail (at least thus far) to be an influential “dominator” at the crease and Andrew Strauss be lean in run-scoring terms as well, the host nation would have been almost overwhelmingly tipped to prevail.

I admit to going “ouch” myself because round about that time I, too, was confidently contemplating a South African series triumph -- by as many as two Tests, in fact.

Yet despite botching that forecast near spectacularly, I am still reasonably steadfast in my suspicion that, player for player and based on comparative individual career records, the Proteas remain the stronger outfit.

If I were to pick a combined Test team today to save the respective countries from sudden annexation by a squad of hostile aliens, it would probably look a little like this: Smith, Strauss, Kallis, Pietersen, De Villiers, Collingwood, Boucher, Swann, Morkel, Anderson, Steyn – a six-five split in favour of South Africa. (Yes, some wags might opt to brand “KP” a seventh Saffer!)

But if you chose a side based more strongly on form over the first three Tests of the current series, the split might well tilt slightly the other way, with once-embattled Messrs Bell and Cook coming in somewhere for Pietersen and De Villiers in the batting lineup. (Strauss stays because his captaincy has been important to the state of the series, I think.)

And therein lies the rub: as things stand, the tourists have gelled better as a unit whereas the Proteas have arguably depended too heavily, for example, on the old firm of Smith and Kallis for runs and stability among the top six.

I believe the slightly less foam-at-the-mouth critics among us will be prepared to concede that luck has been largely absent from the South African game.

What if Steyn and Kallis had been fully bowling-fit from the outset? What if the Proteas had had the better of Durban conditions, rather than the other way around? What if England No 11 Graham Onions had been knocked over at Centurion and Newlands, rather than basically having saved two Tests for them?

But then again, there is also a very compelling case for doffing our hats to England’s unusual levels of collective spirit, desire, motivation and old-fashioned “bottle” this summer.

Maybe Onions, for instance, crucially holding out at the crease on two final-session occasions was no mere fluke: had England’s No 11 of yesteryear been, say, a trembling rabbit like a Tufnell, Mullally or Malcolm, there is every chance South Africa would be going to Johannesburg 2-1 up, rather than still 1-0 down.

Even things like the resilience and mental toughness of the tail have markedly improved under England’s newest regime.

They know, broadly, their team’s strengths and weaknesses and work cleverly to them, or around them.

Strauss’s get-under-your-skin outfit have served up some sobering lessons to their opponents on this tour, both at one-day and Test level, and regardless of whether they are actually better or not.

His opposite number Smith made a remarkably honest, telling statement before the Newlands Test: “Maybe the players need to be challenged a little more in terms of training; going a little bit harder is something we could perhaps look at.”

It forcefully suggested that a malaise, in certain respects, had crept into the home camp.

If the Proteas do surrender the Test portion of England’s visit as well, a vigorous post mortem on South Africa’s team hierarchy and other departments will be fully merited.

So the stakes at Wanderers are very, very high.

An overdue, comprehensive South African win against these dogged foes might be the minimum requirement to prevent some high-profile heads rolling, or at least coming under unprecedented internal scrutiny and absolutely deafening public flak …