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Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood are two cricketers and characters as different as chalk and cheddar, but yesterday they combined deliciously for a while to give England parity and then, for the first time in the match, the advantage.

For Collingwood, in particular, a game to forget became a day to remember as he sprinted to a hundred in the late afternoon sunshine. He left the field with thousands chanting his name, when for two days all they had been calling for was his head.

England’s lead is 214 and, with four wickets in hand, the match is in the balance, given that the pitch is still playing superbly. Ten out of the past 11 first-class games have been drawn here, which suggests that it will not deteriorate. South Africa should be confident of chasing a large score in the fourth innings, but they will have been chastened by England’s boldness and they will have to bat better than they bowled yesterday.

England’s position could have been so much more secure had Pietersen not holed out going for a six to bring up his hundred. He was looking invincible, toying with South Africa’s bowlers and allowing Collingwood to advance in his slipstream. Where Pietersen failed, though, Collingwood succeeded, smashing Paul Harris over long-on and into the stands to bring up an emotional and career-defining hundred shortly before the close.

It was a day when the advantage ebbed and flowed, England amputating the South Africa tail in the first hour, ceding a lead of only 83, and then losing three wickets themselves overhauling this deficit. The top-order batsmen again got in and got out without producing anything substantial, Ian Bell and Alastair Cook especially loose and culpable. By the end, though, South Africa looked weary and Collingwood and Tim Ambrose, also short of form and under pressure, but growing in stature with every run, were sorry to leave the field.

England’s batsmen at least faced up to their demons positively. Michael Vaughan made only 17, but he did so in a manner that may have rubbed off on his teammates. Until he drove Andre Nel to mid-off, his body language and footwork had an urgency lacking in the recent past. It was if he had said to his team that if they were to go down, they were not to do so timidly.

This attitude seemed to rub off on Collingwood, especially, who must have approached the plank with a great deal of trepidation. Up until yesterday afternoon, he had had a dreadful match, dropping catches, scoring only four runs and bowling a couple of overs of what club players would recognise as “buffet bowling”. It was clear at the start of his innings that all was not well technically: his back-lift was so low that it had almost disappeared and his bottom hand and right side were dominant to the exclusion of everything else.

But the longer he stayed, the more confident he became and, gradually, the fluency arrived and his blade-work, so jerky and stabby when out of form, took on a more pendulum-like flow. There were eight boundaries in his first fifty, seven in his second, some square on the off side and others through the arc between mid-wicket and square leg. As well as Collingwood played, South Africa will be disappointed to have fed his strengths.

This was an innings of substance from a player choc-full of character; an innings in which technique, style and method were subservient to the demands of the situation. Not that he scored slowly, being an equal partner to Pietersen in their stand of 115. But England simply needed a score from him and he knew that he owed them.

Batting at the other end from Pietersen can be a blessing and a curse, since Pietersen’s free-scoring nature takes both the pressure off his partner as well as highlighting the deficiencies. But Collingwood and Pietersen clearly like batting together as six partnerships of three figures or more suggest. In Adelaide two winters ago, they put on more than 300 together and England would dearly have loved something of this magnitude now.

That the partnership was cut short was down to a moment of madness, a rush of blood - call it what you will - from Pietersen, who, if South Africa do end up winning this match, ought to dwell on his dismissal. He was in the process of giving Harris a mauling: switch-hitting him when he came over the wicket, for successive boundaries, and generally treating him with utter contempt. At the other end, Morne Morkel had just bowled three overs for 32 runs. Graeme Smith did not know where to turn.