FEAR NOT, for it is still possible to obtain tickets for the climactic fifth npower Test of the Ashes series at the Oval, which begins a week on Thursday. You just need either to be seriously wealthy or to break open several piggy banks to summon the necessary funds. Yesterday on eBay, the online auction site, a pair of tickets for the Friday of the Oval Test were sold for £1,115 (plus £3.85 postage, if required).

The demand for tickets for the later Tests has risen with each passing drama in this incredible series and their selling-on price has soared accordingly.

Pairs of tickets were also available on eBay yesterday for the fourth day of the Oval Test, with a latest bid of £600. Incredibly, a bid of £360 had been submitted for a pair of tickets for the fifth day’s play.

This last figure is perhaps the best illustration of how the series has caught on way beyond cricket’s traditional audience. Tickets for the fifth day of a Test do not normally go on sale in advance at all because of the possibility of an early finish and the huge administrative costs involved in processing refunds.

Of the four matches so far in this series, only the third Test at Old Trafford went into Monday, and that had been rain-affected. Tickets for the fifth day had not been sold in advance and were available on the day, priced at £10 for adults and £5 for concessions. On top of Old Trafford’s capacity of 23,000, more than 10,000 people had to be turned away.

That would not have been a problem for either Trent Bridge or the Oval, both of which decided to sell tickets in advance for the fifth day and quickly sold out.

“We saw the problem of a fifth day that might decide the Ashes,” Paul Sheldon, the Surrey chief executive, said. “There will be disappointed people (who cannot buy tickets on the day) but we avoid the administrative and policing nightmares of 50,000 people being locked out.”

With the Oval’s enviable location close to central London, selling tickets to watch international matches has seldom been a problem for Surrey. The first four days of every Test and every one-day international at the Oval have been sold out since 1987. For the fifth Ashes Test, they are being sold time and time again and their value is rising by the day.