Another day/nightmare and the ledger of South Africa's tour of India will tilt into arrears. Still another and they will come home firmly on the wrong side of the equation.

Sunday's seven-wicket loss in the third T20I in Dharamsala was the visitors' fourth loss on this visit. They have also won four matches. With two T20Is to go - in Lucknow on Wednesday and Ahmedabad on Friday - the fate of the tour is in the balance.

There is much to quibble with in that statement of fact. Surely South Africa's first Test series victory in India in more than 25 years is worth greater consideration than two ticks in the win column? Surely we can't take seriously India's 2-1 success in an ODI rubber robbed of context by the fact that the next World Cup is almost two years away?

Surely. But it's just as certain that teams are measured on how many games they win and lose. Shukri Conrad's white-ball predecessor, Rob Walter, came under press and public pressure when his teams lost series that, in the bigger scheme of things, mattered little. Conrad can expect similar scrutiny.

Walter's teams won 33 of their 67 bilateral games across both formats - a success rate of 49.25%. Currently Conrad's white-ball sides have a winning percentage of 41.38. He succeeded Walter in May, and South Africa have won half of their dozen ODIs under him. That's alarming enough for an ambitious team and their supporters but it's better than their T20I record with Conrad in charge - played 17, won six.

And that with the start of the T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka and India looming in less than two months. Yet Conrad hasn't faced tough questions.

Part of the reason for that is that he has done what no other South Africa coach besides Bob Woolmer did, and not since 1998 - when Woolmer's side won the ICC Knockout, the precursor to the Champions Trophy. In June, Conrad's Test team beat Australia by five wickets in the WTC final at Lord's. That earned Conrad a line of credit that won't run out for a while.

Another part of the reason comes down to personality. Walter was invariably cordial in his dealings with the media but also strictly analytical, approaching issues with an unshakeable, cold logic. Conrad is genially engaging, never far from cracking a joke to make his point. His logic is as bulletproof as Walter's but he communicates it more warmly. Even the most objective reporters would struggle not to see him in a more forgiving light when things don't go according to plan.

A seaming pitch was a factor in Sunday's failure to launch, and the Indians bowled superbly. But that doesn't adequately explain South Africa being for 117. Not when the home side were never stretched before they won with 25 balls to spare.

"You don't expect the pitch to do that much, and for such an extended period - it felt like it went almost throughout the whole innings," Aiden Markram told a press conference.

"It was challenging, but you can come across conditions like this and you have to have a plan as a team to try and get to a competitive score that gives your bowlers a chance of defending. It's about understanding that it's not a 200 pitch."

Markram himself set the example for how to do that with his 46-ball 61, the only half-century of the match. But none of his teammates followed that lead; Donovan Ferreira's 20 was South Africa's next best effort.

Arshdeep Singh trapped Reeza Hendricks in front with the fourth ball of the match, an inswinger, on his way to 2/13 at the startling economy rate of 3.25. Varun Chakravarthy was even tighter in his 2/11 for an economy rate of 2.75.

"You can have friendly conditions but the bowlers still have to land the ball in the right areas, and that's exactly what they did," Markram said. "From ball number one they were straight on it and that made life really difficult."

The wider truth is that the South Africans have been bowled out in four of their six white-ball games on this tour, including for their record low of 74 in the first T20I in Cuttack on Tuesday. Only once have they returned the favour to their opponents.

That cannot all come down to the state of the pitches, and to their credit the visitors haven't tried to say so. They have two more opportunities not to have to explain their shortcomings. Best they take them.