This could be called the series of the three Ps: patience, perseverance and Pietersen. South Africa have won it already because of the first two, England may yet win at the Brit Oval because of the third. If South Africa are to beat Australia in home and away series this winter it will be by means of the same admirable capacity to stick to their plans with the discipline of marathon runners. If England are still to be in the Ashes series against Australia this time next year - although Pietersen, like Michael Vaughan may believe it has to be done by means of “positive” cricket - they have to show more of the unbreakable concentration that characterises the South Africa side today, just as it always has done.

Probably, too, they have to find a second match-winning batsman. It does not look like being Andrew Strauss at present and, for all his qualities, it is unlikely to be Paul Collingwood, the other main contributor yesterday. Because of their quality and experience it could yet be Robert Key or Owais Shah. The squad selection for this Test suggested that Ravi Bopara is in front of them in the queue in view of his general excellence and enterprise for Essex this season. Such is his talent, as opposed to his technique at this stage of his career, he could easily become a dominating player at the highest level, but it will not happen as soon as next year because England have only six Tests this winter and they are more than likely to want five bowlers in all of them.

The burden therefore falls upon Alastair Cook and Ian Bell, the other specialist runscorers in this match. The two best young batsmen to have emerged from the English “system” in recent years will not quite become Kevin Pietersens. Nor can that be expected because yesterday’s magnificent century-maker is that rarity, an original batsman. What is more, he is one who wins games off his own bat, although it will happen more often when he loses the habit of finding a means of getting out just before or just after a personal milestone. Many a longer innings would have been played by batsmen if there had been no special significance to the number 100.

South Africa have two of these sort of elite batsmen for whom a hundred is merely a basis for negotiation. Jacques Kallis and Graeme Smith are insatiable, Kallis now within range of 10,000 Test runs and Smith having recently passed 5,750. Kallis averages 56, Smith a shade under 50. Kallis has 30 Test hundreds, Smith 16. These, and Pietersen’s 14 hundreds from only 43 games, also at an average better than 50, are the sort of heights to which Bell and Cook must aspire.

To reach them, they have to find the art of making big scores after they have made a start. Bell can be forgiven, perhaps, for getting out in the first over yesterday because it can happen to anyone in what is effectively a fresh innings. He had, however, played with such assurance on his return to No 3 in the order the previous evening that it was still a disappointment. It may appear cruel but it was another case of getting so far but not far enough, to some extent the story of his Test career to date. It began on the same gloriously even square, with a memorably attractive 70 on debut against West Indies four years ago.

In only his third innings, Bell followed up with a brilliant unbeaten 162 against Bangladesh at the Riverside in 2005 but he and everyone else knew that batting was about to become very much harder. In the series against Australia that followed he was out for single figure scores seven times, saved only by a couple of valuable fifties at Old Trafford from the sort of prolonged setback that affected the similarly gifted Mark Ramprakash after his tough first series against the West Indies in 1991.

Since then, Bell has added seven hundreds, the most recent of them the memorably classical 199 at Lord’s in the first match of this series, but only the 119 he made at No 6 against Pakistan at Headingley in 2006 and the 110 in Napier this year were made in a match won by England. Delivering his assessment on Bell and Cook yesterday, Graham Gooch, England’s highest Test runscorer, made the point that neither is yet the sort of player who, at this exalted level, has often been able enough to influence the result of a match.

“The great players have the ability, the will and concentration to change games off their own bat,” Gooch said. Gooch knows Cook’s play intimately from his position as Essex’s batting coach and has no doubt that he will get over his present inclination to get a good start to an innings but find a way of getting out when well set, as he did only two overs before lunch yesterday. Few batsmen could have made a more auspicious start in Test matches than Cook did as a 21-year-old in Nagpur, India, making 60 and 104 not out in his first two innings after his exhausting trip from the England A tour to the West Indies.

He has made six hundreds since and he is only 23, but this is his 34th Test and he has now played 16 innings since his most recent Test century, a stoical 118 in Galle last December.