IF ANYONE was in any doubt as to Andrew Flintoff’s value to England, this Edgbaston Test match would have demonstrated perfectly what he brings to the team as a catalyst alone. He will no doubt admit that there is room for improvement in his batting, though he seems to have made great strides already in that department since that nervy and inconsistent first innings at Headingley in the previous Test.

That England stayed in the match at all, after a first day that plumbed the depths and left them decidedly up against it, was due to Flintoff’s lion-hearted effort in the latter stages of the second day. That session was the first in the match in which the crowd became noticeably involved. They are the barometer of the atmosphere of a match and as they sensed that something special was happening so, too, did the England team. It produces an automatic upsurge of energy in all quarters; Flintoff inspires the crowd, the crowd inspires Flintoff, pressure mounts on the South Africans at the crease and hey presto, the game changes.

One can sympathise with the batsman having to deal with that in the gloom but these things have a habit of coming round. Just remember England starting their innings at the Wanderers in 1999 with Allan Donald bowling at the speed of light in light that hardly qualified as light! Put plainly it was dark and not many at that ground could believe that the game was allowed to start.

Here at Edgbaston, South Africa’s problems were compounded by something that few of us can understand, namely why the problems of sighting the ball from the Pavilion End arose only when Flintoff was bowling and only apparently when right-handers were facing. I daresay those affected, Jacques Kallis, Neil McKenzie and Mark Boucher, will be able to offer some explanation but it is still something of a mystery that needs light shed upon it.

Back to Flintoff; he is the facilitator, the man who opens doors for others. It is partly why he does not end up with five-wicket hauls as often as one would expect. After Thursday afternoon it seemed he was poised for five wickets or more with four in the bag and four still left to take, but it was Sidebottom and Anderson who got them. There is something of the Botham-effect in all this, although, as I have done in the past, I must just say that Freddie’s figures do not stack up against those of my former teammate and probably never will. But that does not diminish in any way his value.

The fact is that it was he who gave England new hope in the match at just the right moment. I don’t suppose Kevin Pietersen needs anyone else to get his competitive juices flowing but one can imagine a thought process that says to a man like Pietersen: “Freddie has got it going, has given us a chance; now it’s up to me to make the most of that chance.” Which is what he did up until the moment of overambition that in turn opened up the game again.

One wonders, too, how much Paul Collingwood would have drawn inspiration from the performances of those two. Wherever he got his strength from, whether in response to what others were doing or just from some hidden depths previously untapped, it was heart-warming to see him put his bad times behind him and I cannot imagine that anyone would have been anything other than delighted for him.

England deserved the brickbats thrown at them after the first innings slide but in the past couple of days they have shown resilience that we were starting to feel had deserted them and it was great to see. For Flintoff it is now a question of building upon his impressive return to the big time. That means getting his batting back on track.

When he admitted after the first innings at Headingley that it was the best he had felt with the bat all summer, I was worried. That was a long way short of the batsman we know he can be at his best. In the second innings there he looked noticeably better, as if the environment of a Test match was already working on him. Here at Edgbaston in the first innings he batted with discipline and all too briefly at the end of the innings slipped into master-blaster mode before the run-outs cut him short.

Now that Collingwood seems to have rediscovered his mojo it appears that the No 6 slot is, at least for a while, sorted. It means that Flintoff can stay at seven, as Vaughan apparently wants him to, and if he continues to rediscover his form at the crease it will at least open up options for England in the future when the debate reopens, as it surely will, about a four or five-man attack. If it stays as a four-man attack, although Flintoff has thrived on his workload over the past two Tests, Vaughan will have to keep an eye on him. With back-to-back Tests de rigueur around the world, England cannot expect Flintoff to shoulder the greater burden every time.

As the game finally ebbed away from England late in the day it was to Flintoff that Vaughan again turned, but by then there was little that even he could do in the face of yet another magnificent performance from Graeme Smith.