Age-old duel resumes: England v Warne

Today, for the first time, these two teams looked well-matched. Of course, only one of them is going to win this Test, and England’s batsmen, Ian Bell apart, are open to the charge that they have delivered when it is too late. But they could easily have crumbled again. Four years ago in Brisbane, their second innings amounted to 79 all out.

Instead we saw an intriguing battle, the latest chapter in an age-old duel – England v Shane Warne. Here, as in no other department of their game except Andrew Flintoff’s bowling, England managed to recapture the mood of 2005. In that series, they handed Warne loads of wickets, but refused to let him dominate. For years, Warne and Glenn McGrath had been both attacking and defensive at the same time, adding up to a quadruple whammy for their captains. Under Michael Vaughan, England’s approach said: we can’t stop you taking wickets, so we’re going to make you pay more for them.

Warne went for 3.15 an over last year, the first time he had been above three in an Ashes series. England took 797 runs off him in 252.5 overs, whereas 12 years earlier, in the wonderball series, they scraped only 897 off 439.5, at the ridiculous price of 1.99. Kevin Pietersen fearlessly laid into Warne; Flintoff played block-or-bash; Vaughan showed his usual flair; Andrew Strauss slowly learnt to survive; Geraint Jones managed better than usual against high-class spin. Only Bell and the tail were mesmerised.

In this match, England have again shown Warne a healthy disrespect. Pietersen sashayed down the track to him as if he was Mark Ramprakash on Strictly Come Dancing. Paul Collingwood, far less predictably, took the same route. He perished by it, but not before he had made far more runs than many people thought he was capable of at no.4. We knew he was a scrapper; we didn’t know he could be this fluent on a treacherous pitch.

Warne wasn’t at his best, sending down more bad balls than usual and letting that economy rate nudge up again, to three and a half. But he also showed the qualities of a champion. He nabbed Bell with the wrong'un, a delivery he discusses more often than he actually bowls it. He bagged Cook just the way he used to get Strauss in their first few meetings, with a big leg-break out of the rough. (Whether he will do the same to Strauss again, we’ll never know, if Strauss remains addicted to the hook.) And he lured Flintoff into one of those straight mishits of his which turn mid-off and mid-on into vital catching positions.

England helped themselves to a hundred runs off Warne, and yet he had the nous, the will and the resilience to end up with four wickets. Knowing him, he’ll be looking for a nine-for.