Cricket: England revival restores faith

THE OVAL, Surrey - Some people say test cricket is dying, that it is a time-expired casualty of a new sports culture but, believe it or not, you couldn't find a single one of them in the long shadows here yesterday.

Not when the Ashes were regained by England for the second time in four years and old heroes like Freddie Flintoff and Steve Harmison contrived for one last time, certainly for Flintoff and perhaps Harmison, to grab the nation at a most emotional place.

Flintoff quite beautifully threw down the wicket of the man always most likely to frustrate England, the eternally pugnacious Australian captain Ricky Ponting, and then stood in what now has become a trademarked pose - the warrior taking his acclaim.

On this occasion The Oval responded down to each last man, woman and child. It rose because it knew that however obdurate the Australian opposition, for however long the resilient Mike Hussey strung out his resistance as he fought his way to his 10th Test century against the most onerous odds, there was a tide running in England's favour that could hardly be repulsed.

Not only did Andrew Strauss's team win, they offered the gloriously unanswerable evidence that this is indeed the form of cricket, of all of sport if you like, of which you can least confidently chart its astonishing intrigue.

Two weeks ago England were the dead men of this historic series. Not only were they beaten at Headingley in the fourth Test and required to win here to prise back the Ashes, they had produced a performance of such limp application and abandoned technique that some of us thought the Australians would find only pockets of resistance.

Not only did Australia have the superior momentum, they also had troops much more readily battled-hardened, players who openly scorned England's heavy reliance on the cult of personality that surrounded Flintoff.

Indeed, there was controversy when the advice notes of former Australian opener Justin Langer to his old teammates strayed into public and were seen to include the dismissive assessment that England were both "pussies and egomaniacs".

Here they were something quite different and yesterday the Aussies, fair dinkum, were prepared to acknowledge an extraordinary transformation in their opponents. Though Ponting was clearly mortified by the fact that for a second time he has lost the Ashes on Pommy soil, he nursed his bruised mouth - where he received the ball with some force on Saturday while fielding - and admitted that the English had come through more strongly. The Oval pitch was poor, he said, but it did not affect the result. What affected the result was the superior commitment and performance of England and Ponting reserved his highest praise for his opposite number, Strauss, the captain who had led his team away from absolute confusion at the start of the year.

The greatest cheers went to Flintoff, but there was no doubt about the man who had done most to make it all happen. Independent