Happy and necessary result as was yesterday's six-wicket victory, the fourth npower Test proved again two general rules applying to England teams in the period since 2005. On song they can beat anyone but, unless a corner has been turned at the Brit Oval in the past few days, they tend not to do so until the main issue has been resolved. The key sessions in this series, such as those on the fourth morning at Lord's and Edgbaston or the second morning at Headingley Carnegie, were won by their tougher opponents. To borrow from other sports, they do not win enough of the big points or hole enough of the pressure putts.

The other trend that needs to change if they are to be celebrating something much more significant than a consolation victory this time next year is that they tend to play at their best when the ball is moving about, be it on hard pitches with some bounce in them, such as Old Trafford or the Oval, or those where the ball swings, such as Trent Bridge. What a pity that two of those grounds have not been given an Australia Test next year.

Bland pitches and sunny weather have not suited a team with six batsmen so of all the good things that Kevin Pietersen has done in the past eight days, the best was probably to insist that he wanted Stephen Harmison back in his team as part of a five-man attack. Match figures of four for 133 may look ordinary on paper but Harmison was the man who shook the likes of Graeme Smith and Ashwell Prince - even the unflappable Neil McKenzie - out of their comfortable cocoons.

With Andrew Flintoff to carry on the bullying, there is no respite for opponents when Harmison is threatening the ribs in his Durham Demon, as opposed to Ashington Angel, mode. Add two swing bowlers - Anderson, Sidebottom, Jones, take your pick - and one key department looks ready to sweep the side on to a higher plane if only the other elements will come together. But no one is likely to be in any danger of complacency, least of all Flintoff and Harmison, who could both look with admiration and envy at the bowler who took the most wickets in this match.

Outside the Eastern Cape where his talent first emerged, Makhaya Ntini is not a name that comes immediately to mind when great fast bowlers are discussed. Yet this lithe and predatory athlete has demanded a place at the top table by the one yardstick with which no one can argue. Seven more wickets at the Oval took his tally to 358 wickets from 91 Tests. He was bowling very much better at the end of the series than at the start, when he looked a spent force during the Lord's Test.

Ntini links the Donald and Pollock era with the new one of Morkel and Steyn. The first black cricketer to play Test cricket for South Africa when he appeared against Sri Lanka in Cape Town in 1998, he has also greatly helped to ease the transition towards a multiracial team picked these days purely on merit. A little like the prolific Courtney Walsh, he is no one's idea of a thoroughbred - more a workhouse of extraordinary stamina - but he has more victims than the more highly rated Allan Donald.

Another 64 would take him beyond the final haul of his country's greatest wicket-taker, Shaun Pollock. That is the work of no more than a couple of years these days and although he may seem to have been bowling for South Africa for ever, his birth certificate says that he is only 31.

His wickets in this match were typical, the result not just of pace, bounce, new-ball swing and the ability to dart the ball each way off the seam but also his famous angle of attack. His coaches have encouraged him to go round the wicket occasionally, even to right-handers, and he has learnt to do so, but he did not feel the need in this game.

Varying his delivery position on the crease was sufficient to get Alastair Cook and Ian Bell in both innings, the manner of their dismissals offering something of a microcosm of his whole career. Cook was caught behind chasing a wide ball in the first innings, then edged a drive outside his off stump in the second just when he thought he had taken control. Bell nicked a ball that left him off a length in the first knock, only to be bowled round his legs yesterday in his anxiety not to play inside the line a second time.

Ntini needed to break through earlier than he did yesterday to make it a truly exciting day for the crowd of more than 15,000 who came to Kennington for no more than £15 a ticket, but once again Surrey's sensible pricing policy for the final day of a Test series paid off. The most prosperous club in the country has been accused of being too greedy for selling tickets for the most eagerly awaited matches for more than six times that amount but no one better understands the law of supply and demand.