From the moment that “Freddie” Flintoff announced his forthcoming retirement from Test cricket last week, there seemed to be an inevitability about who would lay claim to the spoils if the England team were victorious at Lord’s.

And they certainly were. Despite a rearguard action by Australia that briefly threatened to break records, England secured their first Test win for 75 years against the old enemy at the home of cricket and, fittingly, it was Flintoff who seized the booty.

Clasping ball and stump, he led the team off the field, up the steps and inside the venerable red-brick pavilion as a nation, and particularly the nearcapacity crowd present yesterday morning, rejoiced.

Flintoff’s herculean effort of fast bowling from the Pavilion End had sealed the victory and given him his third five-wicket haul in Tests. Taking five wickets for 92, Flintoff deserved all the praise that poured from the crowd and his team-mates.

Times Archive, 1934: England beat Australia at Lord's

England won by an innings and 38 runs on the third day of the match, with Verity taking a total of 15 wickets

• Topic: The 1981 Ashes

• Topic: The Bodyline Series

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And it is a fair bet that the inner sanctum of the MCC members’ pavilion has never witnessed a greater outpouring of emotion than the one that greeted the cricketers after they had completed their 115-run triumph just before lunch.

While the morning’s drama was unfolding, the benches on the outside of the pavilion were packed and in the famous Long Room members stood several rows deep behind those lucky enough to have secured a place in the few rows of armchairs.

In 1981, when Ian Botham, as England captain, was out for his second duck of the match against Australia at Lord’s, his return to the pavilion and walk through the Long Room met with a deafening silence, which hurts him to this day. Throughout yesterday morning, there was silence of an altogether different nature. Each ball was watched with rapt attention, the hush broken only by the occasional whispered comment between neighbours. There was a generous burst of applause for one of many fine strokes played by Australia’s lower-order batsmen, but applause, and a whole lot more noise echoing off the high ceiling, whenever England took one of the five remaining wickets.

After the fall of the final wicket, dozens more members, proudly wearing the MCC’s “egg and bacon” tie, descended on the Long Room to welcome their heroes from the field.

Fuelled by elation, but at who knows what cost to his wonky knee, Flintoff summoned the energy to run up the pavilion steps.

When he and the rest of the team threaded their way along a temporarily roped-off gangway in the Long Room, their reception was deafening. As the players, now led by a beaming captain Andrew Strauss, bounded up the wide staircase leading to the home dressing room, they were greeted by members lining the walls and more cheering before heading to celebrate in the players’ sanctuary.

Needless to say, in Australia there was a different reaction. The Sydney-based Daily Telegraph headlined “ASHES DISASTER”, adding that “Australia’s Ashes campaign is now officially in crisis”, while 58 per cent of respondents to an online poll for the Herald Sun in Melbourne said that Australia could not now win the Ashes.

While the reaction would all have been rather more sedate in 1934, Englishmen and women will hope they do not have to wait quite so long for the next chance to celebrate a Lord’s win over our oldest rival.