When Lee came back on, Ricky Ponting, whose principal reaction had been to chew his gum a little faster, ordered all his fielders to the boundary, with the exception of the keeper. It is the greatest compliment a captain can pay a batsman.He must have nearly choked when the attack reached its climax – straight six, four at third man off a no- ball, six on to the Pavilion roof – 17 in the over, by which time the last-wicket stand with Simon Jones had reached 49.Their astonishing 50 partnership had taken 40 balls and the game had been turned upside down. As Shane Warne said after the day’s play, the momentum had shifted to England.Kasprowicz applauded Flintoff as we walked off, having been bowled for 73 The crowd yelled “Super, Super Fred, Super Freddy Flintoff” Flintoff said the crowd is as good as a 12th man. “They can always sense when you need a lift.”And the atmosphere in the dressing-room? “Buoyant,” he said Thanks mainly to the one and only Andrew Flintoff.. Visionary behind Twenty20

To be seen at Edgbaston, relatively unnoticed but with a smile of understandable self-satisfaction, is the man who saved English cricket.

He did not perform the rescue act alone and he will never play a Test match but Stuart Robertson’s contribution will endure.

He did not quite invent Twenty20 cricket when he was marketing manager of the England and Wales Cricket Board, but he orchestrated the research and pursued the vision.The result has been a transformation of how the domestic professional game is perceived and watched. For the third season in a row, crowds have increased.”It was known more as ‘Short-form cricket played for three hours in the evening’ in those days,” said Robertson, now marketing head at Warwickshire.”And from our sample of some 2,500 people it seemed that this would be popular,” he added. “We eliminated a third of the group with the first question, which was ‘do you like cricket?’ and ended up with a third to whom the game had some appeal. But it wasn’t middle-class, middle-aged white males we wished to encourage. Where were women, families and 16 to 34-year-olds?”So Twenty20, a game played at night by village cricketers for generations, was born. The average attendance at matches this year was 7,000, almost treble what Robertson originally envisaged. Women, families and the young have been entranced and the latest evidence shows that those traditional observers, the fuddy-duddies, have been similarly ensnared.”But it wouldn’t have worked without the players,” said Robertson “They bought into it.

I still think it can grow some more but I do think it ought to be restricted internationally.” Wheelie keeps turning Ashley Giles, bless him, has had a few things to say about his critics. He had a point but perhaps he should have kept it to himself. The last time the admirable Giles was upset it was because the radio commentator Henry Blofeld kept referring to him as “a wheelie-bin” and thought it was hilarious. It is not without a certain irony that Giles is now voicing his opinions in a column in The Guardian ghosted by David Hopps, the reporter who first likened him to a rubbish receptacle.

The bench mark When Michael Vaughan was struck on an elbow in the nets, the name of Samuel Johnson was beamed round the world. It was Mr Johnson who donated to Warwickshire the bench on which Vaughan sat to receive emergency treatment. “He was an old member, that’s all we know,” said a county spokesman If Mr Johnson or his relations are out there, get in touch His seat never did better service. Nothing daunted Matthew Hayden, Australia’s opener, was out for nought in his side’s first innings.

It ended a run of 67 innings without a duck, thus failing to equal Doug Walters’ streak of 68 and 22 short of Allan Border’s Australian record David Gower holds the world record Test sequence of 119.. At the conclusion of a day which had been by measures mesmeric and exhausting and which, on occasions – notably those involving Andrew Flintoff and Shane Warne – had produced moments of downright magnificence, they drifted away, marvelling at the capacity of the long game to exhilarate. True, England’s proximity to an elusive triumph which should be confirmed early today was an influential factor in that judgement. Yet, while all the trends suggest that the sport is increasingly being directed at those with the attention-span of a butterfly, and who possess an equal affinity for bright colours, this was evidence aplenty that the version played in whites, over a notional five days, remains beyond compare.

Earlier this week, Shane Warne had obliged our tabloid brethren by revealing that he would willingly “give up sex” to bowl a few more deliveries like his “ball of the century” to Mike Gatting. As we sated ourselves yesterday on the sublimely balanced yet, until the last session, always fluctuating fortunes of a match in which the world’s finest bowler had already achieved something similar to that 1993 Ashes-debut delivery, you could appreciate that little piece of Warney wisdom.Who, on days such as this, would have desired to be anywhere – or if we can for a moment be as candid as the Australian leg spinner, doing anything – else? Indeed, the same may be said of all three days thus far, together with the Lord’s opener. The reality, for once, has superseded the pre-series hyperbole by some margin – apparently as the result of some kind of unspoken pact between these teams (with only Justin Langer not party to it, to judge by his batting resilience on Friday) to commit themselves to attack.There may have been an early autumnal feel, accentuated by the fact that football was being slowly beckoned back into our consciousness at the likes of Portman Road and the City Ground, but it is doubtful that anywhere in the land the sense of constant anticipation could have been equalled.They have witnessed some supreme achievements here over the years, not least England’s nine-wicket Ashes triumph in 1997, which included Nasser Hussain’s 207, and, on an individual level, Brian Lara’s world record 501 on 6 June 1994. But this was akin to entering a new dimension, in which even the most naturally circumspect player was somehow reminded of his duty to entertain.England’s progress was even enough occasionally to silence the “Barmy Army”.