FEAR of failure is a familiar demon for all athletes, but many of them know that fear of success is still more ferocious. Fear of ultimate success — the culminating triumph that will satisfy all your cravings in one moment of perfection — is the most fearsome demon that can be found in the entire panoply of sport.

Yesterday, England were savaged by that demon and what looked at one stage like a walk in the park became a journey of hard and bitter agonies. But they did it, somehow stumbling over the line to beat Australia by three wickets after being set only 129 to win. That gives England a 2-1 lead in the series with one match to go — the first time they have not lost an Ashes series since 1986-87. Triumph indeed.

The snag is, of course, that to win back the Ashes they need to win the series outright, so they must win or draw at the Oval if they are to fulfil what has been the ultimate dream of English cricket for all but two decades. The going has been tough enough so far, Lord knows what kind of heavy weather England will make of things on the five days that begin on September 8.

Just when Wimbledon was safely over, the England cricket team have set out to outdo Tim Henman as a cause of national neurosis. One unbearable climax has followed another as England have repeatedly outplayed Australia and have repeatedly found it hard, if not impossible, to make the killing stroke. The finger freezes on the trigger, the hand on the hilt of the knife. England simply cannot believe in their own superiority over the old enemy.

The Australia side are a shadow of their former selves, but two men — and two men alone — have repeatedly shown that they have the stomach for battle at any time, of any kind, at any odds. Brett Lee and the incomparable Shane Warne ran England ragged in what should have been a triumphal march.

Twist after twist after twist: just when you think that the plot of this summer can find no further complexity, another rich and savage day emerges, bringing with it new heroics, new heroes, more men savouring the taste of failure for the first time. It is all getting to be more than the nation can bear. Thank God there is only one more match to come, and we can get back to something safe such as football.

England had Australia down and defeated before play began, but neither side was prepared to accept that obvious fact — especially not England. They took the last six Australia wickets with tentative, nerve-racking, attritional cricket, never quite putting the boot in.

It lasted too long: Australia got too many runs. It gave Australia a forlorn hope of victory. But for some athletes, there is no such thing as a forlorn hope.

Warne is one of those men. He seized control of the ball and, it seems, of the Australia team, taking over the bowling at the sixth over and ripping out the super-confident Marcus Trescothick with his first ball. Seven balls later, still without conceding a run, he had the England captain, Michael Vaughan. The demons were unleashed, and they ran amok through the England side.

Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen put on 46 together and seemed to bringing the match to sanity. But nothing in this utterly exceptional series is sane for long. The two of them went in quick succession and Lee got them both, bowling at express pace and with a mad belief that the impossible was well within his grasp. Especially against the Poms.

Hysteria had got among the England batsmen and, in the end, it was down to the bowlers to finish the job. They needed 13 more runs: a nugacity, a mountain. There was blood in the water and the Australians were in feeding frenzy. Ashley Giles and Matthew Hoggard to get: the miracle was on.

But Giles and Hoggard stuck it out in a cheer-every-run nerve-stretcher and that, perhaps, was most appropriate of all. This has been a team performance in a summer of team performances, and the pattern has been throughout that when one English player fails, another stands up for his time of glory.

That was Hoggard in this match, valued despite his scant part in proceedings coming into the game. He was the one who put the Australians on their knees with three wickets in their first innings, he was the one who bowled and bowled when Simon Jones was injured for the second, and he was there with Giles and a bat to close out this fraught Test.

This England side has now got everything except ruthlessness, everything except a killing bite. It will be a handy quality to find before they get to the Oval.