What an astonishing match. What an astonishing comeback, first by England but finally, decisively, by South Africa. Forget Twenty20, cricket can’t produce greater drama than we have seen in this third npower Test. This is a game that has had everything, not only two teams scrapping for the spoils, South Africa for their first series win in England since 1965, England to keep the series alive, but also individual players battling for personal survival.

On Friday afternoon, when England were effectively 21 for four in their second innings, there weren’t enough obituary writers to do justice to the corpses lined up in England’s ranks. The team, Michael Vaughan, the Test captain, and Paul Collingwood, the one-day captain, were all being measured for coffins. Not many mourners were planning on attending the funerals. Yet by yesterday afternoon, galvanised again by their superhero Andrew Flintoff, England were closing in on what would have been one of Vaughan’s greatest triumphs.

The last time England had batted first, conceded a deficit in excess of 80 and still won was at Sydney in 1979 against a Packer-depleted Australia. It was not to be. Vaughan’s opposite number, Graeme Smith, proved stronger and in better nick with the bat and by batting through for an unbeaten 154 saw his side home to the sweetest series victory of his career. He has led South Africa to victory in Pakistan but only to a draw in India. He has only ever lost to Australia. Winning in England has a special resonance for a unified South Africa.

Smith’s runs only highlight the short-fall of runs in Vaughan’s game, though England’s fightback in this match meant his leadership qualities were not entirely forgotten.

Collingwood raised his score from 101 to 135 yesterday morning as England pushed their total to 363, leaving South Africa a challenging, nerve-jangling 281 to win. It was a fourth-innings target they had exceeded only three times in their history, though if ever there was a batsman to see them home it was Smith, who before yesterday averaged 64 in the fourth innings of games South Africa have won. In particular, he will have remembered a century he scored to take South Africa to a target of 234 in New Zealand in 2004 when his captaincy stood on the line in the way Vaughan’s does now. That game proved a huge personal milestone in his development. So will this series victory here.

For more than an hour, South Africa’s openers proceeded fairly serenely. They had their escapes against the new ball when it swung, but Ryan Sidebottom was given only three early overs and the introduction of Flintoff and Monty Panesar only saw an increase in the run-rate. The crowd, usually so boisterous at one of England’s favourite venues, had gone horribly quiet.

Vaughan was running out of options on a slow pitch when Flintoff, not for the first time, came to his aid with a truly lion-hearted eight-over spell that eventually brought the gilt-edged wickets of Neil McKenzie and Jacques Kallis. Both fell lbw, as did Hashim Amla, between times, to Panesar. All three decisions were controversial. Replays suggested the ball to Amla, though he was firmly on the back foot, might have gone over the top, while McKenzie and Kallis were both duped by Flintoff’s high-flighted slower balls they appeared to lose in the dark backdrop above the sightscreen at the pavilion end.

Batsmen had experienced problems facing the taller bowlers from that end earlier in the game, but Flintoff proved more problematic than others. The South Africans had brought the matter to the attention of the umpires on Friday evening during Flintoff’s first great spell of the match but without the consent of both captains nothing was going to be changed and yesterday England used the situation to their advantage. The South Africans were furious, Kallis in particular feeling aggrieved. Only with the greatest self-restraint did he manage to stop himself demolishing the stumps with his bat before leaving the crease after being given out lbw to a ball that struck him flush on the thigh.

If Vaughan is under pressure with 40 runs in five innings, Kallis’s return is not much better at 93 from five, 64 of them in one knock.

The situation of the match was such that minds were being cast back to the game against Australia in 2005, when on a similarly true pitch England defended 282 in the fourth innings compared to 281 now. That game ended in a famous two-run victory with Flintoff sportingly putting a consoling arm around Brett Lee, but now the spirit of cricket appeared to be under threat.

Without the deeper batting lineup they had chosen here, England would not have still been in the game but Vaughan must now have wished he could have called on Steve Harmison.

Well though he batted in a stand of 65 with Collingwood yesterday morning, Sidebottom’s inclusion here proved every bit as much of a gamble as that of Dar-ren Pattinson in Leeds. Sidebottom is not fit and must make way for Harmison at The Oval.