2nd Test Review - Frenetic Hours to Decide Series?

Much has been spoken of the power of momentum recently. It seems that in 2009 no team is complete without it. But Wickman's latest theory is that momentum is a side show. It's all about who handles the frenetic moments in Test cricket best.

Test cricket is mostly played now on decks designed to make sure results don't occur before day four at the earliest and preferably after lunch on the fifth. Bowlers who know this work hard to limit the runs on offer and learn to sit in on off stump and wait for the stultifying pressure of time and match situation to earn them breakthroughs. When those periods occur, the team that handles the situation better wins the Test match. The West Indies did it to England in one cruel session in the first test of the Winter. The Aussies almost did it to us in Cardiff but Collingwood and the tail responded just quickly enough to rescue a slide. At the Oval we did it to Australia. At Centurion South Africa almost did it to us.

Since the heady days of 2004 and 2005 not a whole lot has gone right for England. The complete distruction of perhaps England's most fearsome bowling line up since Willis and Botham opened for England - Harmison, Hoggard, Flintoff and Jones - has left recent English captains wondering where 20 wickets are going to come from.

There have been flashes of brilliance from Flintoff. And James Anderson keeps being talked about as the finished article. But Tests in the last few years have been sometimes painful to watch as a group of developing right arm fast medium merchants have tried and failed to plug away at the top of off while the Pontings, Chaderpauls and Tendulkers of the world stage have milked them for morale sapping Test series losses. Things got so bad that Ryan Sidebottom became an automatic pick for us despite the fact that he's about as threatening as Wickmutt Junior - the latest addition to Wickman's Wick Road menagerie.

Something though began to happen on the runways of the Carribbean earlier this year. Anderson, Broad and Swann learned how to bowl in the most unforgiving of environments against a West Indies team dead set on avoiding defeat for the first time since the late 1990s. Sure at Cardiff as four Australian centurions put them to the sword it looked like the lessons hadn't been learned, but, later in the Summer each of them began to show that they had picked up a thing or two about how to bowl at good batsmen when there's not much help on the ground or in the air.

In the first Test at Centurion the South Africans in that final session showed what scoreboard pressure and tight lines can do when a match situation builds against the batting side and there's nothing to do but bat out time. England held on to force a draw every bit as important as the one they fashioned in Cardiff in July.

Yesterday the lessons of the Caribbean and of the Oval in particular were there for all to see. Swann - extraordinarily potent on the same strip that Harris had toiled away on for the best part of two days - suddenly - with flight and ripping turn - destroyed Prince's nascent career as a Test opener and defeated a man in Amla who scored 100 in the last test and played him like a dream with one every bit as good as the Ponting ball of the Summer.

At the other end Broad - who looked as ineffectual as any England bowler of the last twenty years for much of 2008 / 2009 - suddenly pulled out an Oval matching devastating spell of swing and seam to nip out Kallis and De Villiers. Both of these technically excellent bats were undone by West Indian deliveries - flat pitch, not much overhedd assistance - but both beaten by perfectly pitched in ducking / reverse swinging peaches that were hitting an inch below the top of off stump. On another day Kallis would have been back and across to both of them flat batting them back down the track. But that dicipline, picked up in 18 months of hard test cricket around the world, served Broad well as the scoreboard pressure built.

There was little else to see this morning. Boucher and Morkel would not be able to reprise Atherton and Russell and so it proved. Swann took five for and Broad added another and the game - totally changed in one frenetic hour yesterday - reached its conclusion with a quite stunning victory for England.

Even Smith - who, backed by the excitable Mickey Arthur, has been spouting some awful old tosh about this England side of late - was forced to gracefully admit that his side had been totally outplayed for most - if not all - of this Test. But particularly yesterday. Now England find themselves in the driving seat for this series. One of the best batting line ups in Test cricket has failed twice here (only Steyn's biffing in the first innings made the first innings score look respectable) and with Kallis, Ntini and Harris terribly ordinary with the ball, South Africa will go to Cape Town wondering where it has all gone wrong but hoping the next time one of those sessions comes around, they aren't on the losing end of it.